EDITORIAL
Just a few months separate the publication of the first two issues of
GeoQ, but what a few months they were! The highlight, of course,
was April’s General Assembly in Vienna. With 11,275 participants
from 95 countries and over 13,500 presentations, the conference
was a resounding success. There was new and exciting research
presented in more than 530 scientific sessions, two heated Great
Debates, the first-ever EGU General Assembly smartphone app,
keen media reporting, and much more.
In the months that preceeded the conference, EGU’s social media
networks were a hive of activity, and this only continued to increase
during the Assembly itself. Since the publication of GeoQ #1, the
Union’s presence on social media has been strengthened by a growing number of followers on Twitter (@EuroGeosciences) and ‘likes’
on our Facebook page (European Geosciences Union). Driven by a
series of guest posts and articles about the General Assembly, the
Union’s official blog, GeoLog, has also enjoyed a marked increase
in hits over the past few months.
Now, with the General Assembly behind us, the focus of EGU’s
communications activities returns to this newsletter. The Articles
section brings you three pieces dedicated to three distinct topics
in the Earth sciences: soils and wildfires; forests, hydrology and
erosion risk; and the intersection between molecular ecology and
the history of Earth’s climate. It also features an interview with Millie Basava-Reddi of the International Energy Agency Greenhouse
Gas R&D programme (IEAGHG) focusing on carbon capture and
storage.
There is also room in this issue to reminisce on the General Assembly. Gert-Jan Reichart, the 2012 Programme Committee Chair,
reflects on the conference in the EGU Voice section. EGU News
features an article on this year’s Medal Ceremony and a short report
on Press Office activities at the conference, as well as selected
pieces from our blog and website about some of the Assembly’s
events and sessions. Finally, the Education section reports on the
GIFT Workshop in Vienna.

Prior to joining EGU in September 2011, Bárbara worked as a science writer
at the European Southern Observatory in Garching near Munich, and as a
technical editor for London-based Form & Content Media. She completed a
PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge in 2010.

I couldn’t finish this editorial without mentioning Envisat. ESA’s
Earth observation satellite was instrumental for many new findings
and used widely for research in many of the disciplines covered by
EGU. Sadly, the European Space Agency lost communication with
the satellite in April, and formally ended the mission on May 9.
It is now more urgent than ever to secure funding for the follow-on
Sentinel satellites to make sure the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative proceeds as scheduled. This is
crucial to avoid disruption in the products and services GMES delivers, which have applications ranging from flood warnings and airquality forecasting, to food security and humanitarian aid. The EGU
has written to European policymakers to highlight the importance of
environmental satellites and urge all parties to come to an agreement to allow the prompt launch of Envisat’s follow-on mission.
Bárbara Ferreira
Chief Editor & EGU Media and Communications Officer

Scorching the soil
How do wildfires influence soil properties?
“It only takes one match to burn a thousand trees,” the saying goes.
Trees may be the obvious casualties of wildfires, but the soil they
grow in has just as much significance in the local ecosystem. How
is soil modified by a wildfire? Is it baked beyond recognition, or is
it fertilized by the flames? These are the questions that have fired
the imagination of Dr Cristina Santín (College of Science, Swansea
University, Wales) and her colleagues.

burning history of the two basins over the period 1984–2005. She
explains that the Muniellos basin (below, left) has experienced relatively few wildfires, with only 20% of its area being burnt during the
20-year record. By contrast, the Combo basin (below, right) is a relative fire-trap: burning occurred over 77% of its area, with 25% burnt
on more than one occasion. Soil samples made in the Muniellos
basin therefore served as the control, whereas those from Combo
were used to diagnose wildfire effects.

“Soil is a non-renewable resource,” explains Santín. “Trees grow
back, but a damaged soil takes hundreds or thousands of years
to regenerate.” Therefore, understanding how a soil is altered by a
wildfire is a key component in environmental management – particularly with currently increasing trends of wildfire occurrence and
severity. However, predicting the effect of burning on a given soil is
far from straightforward. A number of factors complicate the picture
and Santín highlights local climate, vegetation type, slope aspect,
and fire intensity as key factors.

Santín and colleagues used carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance
spectroscopy to identify different compounds within a number of soil
samples, based on their electromagnetic fingerprint. In all cases,
samples from Combo were enriched with aromatics. Aromatic ring
molecules, Santín explains, including phenols and benzenes, are
highly concentrated in charcoal, hence their presence in the soil is a
clear signature of burning. “During a fire,” she adds, “most carbon is
emitted to the atmosphere but some of it remains in the soil as black
carbon.” Indeed, if any generalization can be made about the effect
of wildfires, it is that fire-affected soils should typically be black and
carbon-enriched.

Isolating the effect of a wildfire from other environmental variables
can therefore be a tricky problem, and this is where Santín steps
in. Her research, published in a wildfire-specific edition of Catena,
shows differences in soil chemistry between two neighbouring river
basins in the Cantabrian Cordillera, a fire-prone region in the north
of her home-country of Spain. The proximity of these basins implies
that variations of environmental variables would be limited, and only
their wildfire history would differ.

Wildfires therefore play an important part in the global carbon cycle
and, consequently, their impact on global warming is considered in
the influential reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). “The IPCC says that most fires are in balance as a
source or sink of carbon,” says Santín, “but some carbon is retained
in the ground, providing a net sink.” Paradoxically, despite the
smoke they produce, wildfires could therefore be seen as a means
of storing carbon – but Santín cautions against such a simplistic

“The novelty of our research was our choice of sites,” says Santín,
who collaborated with experts in satellite imaging to establish the

Occurrence of wildfires between 1984–2005 in the Muniellos and Combo river basins in the Cantabrian Cordillera, Spain.

4

viewpoint. In her experience, the amount of black carbon contained
within a burnt soil is somehow less than would be expected.

The spark of wildfire research has certainly taken hold, and dedicated sessions were reconvened at the EGU General Assembly in
April. There, twelve talks, twenty posters – and the ‘celebrities’ of
the wildfire world – focused on the life story of black carbon, from
its production through to its decomposition and erosion. The role of
wildfires, it would seem, truly is a hot topic.

“Fires are everywhere,” she says. “Black carbon is being produced,
but we look into the soil and there’s not enough black carbon there.”
So what happens to it? Santín blames erosion. Intense wildfires not
only change soil chemistry, they also make it easier to erode by
damaging its physical structure. In the Cantabrian Cordillera, this
process is particularly evident: soil erosion is exacerbated by steep
slopes and high rainfall, and intense wildfires have caused mountain peaks, like those below, to be denuded of their soil and vegetation cover.

The fate of eroded black carbon is unclear, and it is not known
whether it is mineralized and released to the atmosphere or simply
transported elsewhere and buried. The problem for climate prediction is that black carbon in the soil behaves completely differently to
that in the atmosphere, where it is identified as an agent of global
warming. Santín therefore hopes further integrated research will
determine the role of black carbon in different components of our
climate system and ultimately find out if wildfires really are a carbon sink.
Recently, Santín has been setting off alarm bells around the Swansea campus, conducting controlled burning tests in the University
grounds. The team are therefore looking forward to the summer
season of research, to be spent in the Northwest Territories of
Canada; here, to prevent catastrophic wildfires, land management
agencies burn over 12,000 hectares of forest each year, providing
the ideal testing environment for black carbon studies.

Mountain peaks in the Cantabrian Cordillera, stripped of their soil cover
following erosion after a wildfire. (Credit: C. Santín)

Why virgin forests are not erosion-free
Study asserts that hydrological characteristics of undisturbed forests,
not vegetation cover, determine land susceptibility to erosion
It is a widely held belief that forest cover controls erosion. Yet,
observations worldwide suggest high erosion rates are far from
exceptional in undisturbed, or so-called virgin, forests. A recent
study advances that incident low erosion rates under forest ecosystems are not associated with the tree cover. Instead, they are
related to the oriented course that water follows in the soil, the socalled flow path, in these particular ecosystems. A flow path can
be oriented in predominantly vertical or horizontal direction. If lateral or horizontally oriented flow paths prevail under virgin forest
– not a rare occurrence, – well-developed forest cover is no guarantee for effective erosion control. These conclusions are important to identify erosion-prone areas and select appropriate mitigation measures.

vertical flow paths. This bias may have contributed to the idea that
forests are effective at erosion control.

Evidence from Panama
Zimmermann and his team monitored suspended sediment concentrations in overland and stream flows of a tropical forest in Barro
Colorado Island in Panama, undisturbed since 1923. Despite the
forest’s relatively high density, and rainfall intensities that rarely
exceed the soil infiltration capacity, the site is prone to frequent and
widespread discharge that flows overland. In dry and normal years,
respectively, between one and two tonnes of eroded material per
hectare are observed. The research team identified impermeable
soil layers near the soil surface as drivers of the erosion processes.
These layers render the soil saturated and impede unrestricted vertical flow.

After a survey of published research disclosed apparent heterogeneity of the eroded material under forests, Alexander Zimmermann
(Potsdam University, Germany) and his colleagues dug further and
found that a selection bias exists for study sites with dominantly

5

The researchers drew their conclusions based on samples of suspended erosion material taken at different sites in the forest. Additionally, they modeled the amount of eroded material that is lost
during single high-rainfall events and what is lost over a whole year.

the forest’s soil surface are absent, the annual sum of eroded material can be very low, while high erosion rates can be found where
these horizontal paths dominate.

They did not use the traditional graphical methods that relate discharge and sediment concentration in a one-to-one correspondence. Instead, they applied statistical techniques that, based on
a set of twofold rules, divide observations of discharge and other
hydrological variables into groups, forming what is called decision
trees. Each leaf of these decision trees contains an interval of values that cover new observations. Based on the group to which new
observations belong, prediction intervals of erosion material quantity are constructed. The techniques are suitable to consider different processes that determine the amount of eroded material,
including the antecedent wetness of the soil. Further, with these
techniques, it is possible to assess the accuracy and precision of
the predicted amount of eroded material.

Nutrient-poor and sparse tree cover is beneficial
Interestingly, the scientists hypothesize that nutrient-poor or
sparsely covered forests may be more effective in erosion control. In strongly nutrient-limited ecosystems, leaf litter of low quality
decomposes slowly and accumulates on the forest soil. In combination with thick networks of fine roots in the soil, this may reduce the
kinetic energy of precipitation that reaches the ground through the
forest cover and slow down erosion processes. Counterintuitively,
sparse forest covers may have a beneficial influence as well. In this
case, better light conditions allow growth of shrubs and herbs on
the forest floor, which are effective in preventing sediment transport.
Without doubt, vegetation can reduce erosion risk compared to
bare soil. Yet, forests are not necessarily a guarantee for complete
control of erosion. The conclusions of this study are important to
identify erosion hot-spots, in particular at sites where high erosion
rates are not expected. Undisturbed forest ecosystems characterized by the horizontal flow paths near the soil surface, relatively
nutrient rich soils, and a low light availability at the forest soil, are
especially vulnerable. It is clear now that, for erosion control, we
should also watch our virgin forests carefully.

The site at Barro Colorado Island is not an isolated case where the
interplay between soil and rainfall characteristics triggers horizontal
flow near the forest floor. The findings in Panama add to the wealth
of evidence that overland flow may occur frequently in undisturbed
forest environments. In these environments, soils with superficial
impermeable layers (shallow soils that hold only a limited amount of
water), or water-rejecting conditions at the soil surface, contribute to
the activation of overland flow. The erosion process starts with the
movement of leaf litter and fine soil material that fill the pores of the
hill slope soils, which promotes more transport and results in more
eroded material. Additionally, major rainfall events can even cause
the banks of streams to collapse, which increases the amount of
erosion material dramatically.

Comparisons among undisturbed forest sites indicate that hydrological characteristics strongly influence the quantity of eroded material in discharge in forested areas. Where horizontal flow paths near

Ink-redible insight
Southern Ocean octopus DNA exposes Antarctica’s mercurial climatic history
Molecular ecologists have traditionally used genetics to better
understand the evolution, ecology, and behaviour of life on Earth.
But DNA can also be used to gain an historical understanding of the
Earth itself, to unlock mysteries of the planet’s past, and to support
predictions about its future.

be used to support and interpret hypothesized past climate events
– in this case, the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during
the Pleistocene interglacial periods roughly 1.25 million years ago.

Reconstructing the past with
present-day implications

By comparing genetic patterns found within populations of living
organisms, researchers can look back in evolutionary time to estimate when each population may have split off as a result of changing climatic or geographical features.

In a broader sense, these findings are important because they
demonstrate how geoscientists can apply biological data to expose
the history of the abiotic, or non-living, environment. More specifically, however, these results provide a rare glimpse into the climatic

In an compelling study published recently in Molecular Ecology,
researchers show how DNA from a species of Antarctic octopus can

6

In addition, octopods are an appropriate model organism for this
study because their genetic makeup is well known and enables the
use of a molecular clock, a technique by which mutations in genes
and the resulting evolution of new species can be chronologically
placed in the context of Earth’s history.
Finally, environmental factors further prevent Turquet’s octopus
populations from mixing, including powerful circular currents, or
gyres, that prevail in the Weddell and Ross seas and keep most
smaller organisms from leaving the area.

Genetically similar separate populations
Despite the significant genetic differentiation found between most
pockets of Turquet’s octopus populations, individuals sampled
specifically at the Weddell and Ross seas, some 10,000km apart
and on opposite sides of Antarctica, are remarkably similar on the
genetic level. This suggests that, at some point in the past, the two
seas were connected at what is now the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti) is a relatively small benthic octopus.
An enigmatic homebody, its DNA may harbour untold stories about the
climatic history of Antarctica. (Source: Wikimedia.)

history of Antarctica during relatively recent geologic times. They
support existing climatic reconstructions, showing that the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet, one of the planet’s largest ice bodies, may on
several occasions have collapsed and melted as a result of warming temperatures.

“These two seas are completely separate so we expected the genetics of these octopuses to be quite different. Ocean currents both
facilitate and hinder the flow of genes. But the Antarctic Circumpolar
Current almost certainly would not have facilitated so much dispersal by octopuses that the two populations would have almost identical genetics if the ice sheet had been in place,” explains the study’s
first author, Jan Strugnell of La Trobe University, Australia.

These historic melting events would likely have had far-reaching
consequences on local and global biogeography. Sea levels would
have risen, connecting seas on opposite ends of the Antarctic continent. Today, such sea-level rise would be catastrophic to human
coastal communities, emphasising the need for scientists to continue to raise awareness about the impact of climate change on
Antarctica.

This point was reiterated by Phil Watts of the University of Liverpool,
UK, also an author on the paper. In a press release, he explains,
“We found that they [the different octopus populations] were genetically similar, suggesting that at some point in their past these populations would have been in contact with each other, perhaps at a
time when the oceans were connected by, not separated from, the
West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

The interdisciplinary nature of this study, merging genetics with the
geosciences, was a main driver in its conception. “We wanted to
investigate whether there was any genetic information that could tell
us what the past environment could have been like,” notes Louise
Allcock of the National University of Ireland in Galway to Scientific
American.

Octopod as an ideal model
The study, carried out by an international group of scientists, examined genetic patterns in Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti), a
relatively small polar octopod found on the floor of the Southern
Ocean at depths of up to 1,000m. Despite its circumpolar distribution, living around the entire Antarctic continent, this species has
a characteristically small home range and low level of dispersal.
Such life history traits are vital for this study because they ensure
that populations sampled at different localities have mostly lived in
physical, and thus genetic, isolation from each other.
“This octopus species, with its large population around the region
and limited movements, was an ideal species to use,” reflects
Allcock.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has collapsed on several occasions in history,
raising sea levels and allowing life to move between the Weddell and Ross
seas. (Source: Image modified from Wikimedia.)

7

The genetic survey also provided novel biological information about
the dynamics of Turquet’s octopus populations in the Southern
Ocean. For example, the data show that populations spiked in 1829
and 1902 near South Georgia and that the species managed to survive glacial maximum periods in these and other areas, when ice
sheets were at their maximum extension and water bodies were
locked away under thick layers of ice. The last of these periods
occurred between 26,500–20,000 years ago.

“We were able to take advantage of much larger sample sizes than
had been collected from Antarctica before. This presented us with a
unique opportunity,” said Allcock to Planet Earth Online.
Taken together, these results provide an interdisciplinary perspective on Earth’s past climate, and the life cycle of an enigmatic octopod species, while also demonstrating the important potential role
of modern molecular methods in unlocking the mysteries of our
planet’s geologic history.

Unprecedented sampling scale

Edvard Glücksman, EGU Science Communications Fellow

References

The team used samples previously gathered by the International
Polar Year and Census of Antarctic Marine Life efforts, fish surveys,
and by the Alfred Wegener Institute, which allowed them to examine
the genetic data on an unprecedented scale. They obtained gene
sequences from over 450 Turquet’s octopus individuals taken, by
trawling the sea floor with a net, from locations all around the Antarctic continent.

Interview with Millie Basava-Reddi of the IEA
Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme at EGU 2012
Basava-Reddi talks about her work on evaluating technologies that
can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon capture
and storage.

Could you introduce IEAGHG, the International Energy Agency
Greenhouse Gas research and development programme and tell
us a bit more about it?
The programme is implementing an agreement set up by the IEA in
1991, with the aim of evaluating technologies which can be used to
mitigate greenhouse gases. Most of what we’re looking into at the
moment is carbon capture and storage (CCS). Programme staff,
along with our members and research networks, try to identify
existing knowledge gaps and we commission contractors to carry
out studies in these areas. All of the studies are then reviewed by
external experts. Our aim is to produce non-biased and trustworthy
information.

What sort of studies have you conducted recently?
The most recent study I was looking after was one on the feasibility
of monitoring CO2 storage underground. When CO2 is injected into
the ground, the pH will increase due to the increased partial pressure of CO2 and it’s likely to react with the rocks and minerals in situ.
A range of cations and anions will be produced and it’s important to
be able to monitor these substances. You also need to be able to
monitor brine that is displaced from storage sites in order to comply
with regulations. Our study was concerned with these substances
that are mobilized by injection of CO2.

Millie Basava-Reddi after her interview at this year’s General Assembly.
(Credit: Tim Middleton)

8

Does the IEA programme do any research on the total global
capacity available for CO2 storage?

this is all dependent on, though, is the actual capacity that will be
available because there’s so much uncertainty related to this at the
moment. In the North Sea, we’re likely to use depleted gas fields to
begin with where you have more of an idea about how much you’re
going to be able to store, whereas with deep saline aquifers there’s
the potential for high capacities, but with a lot of uncertainty. The
main area for further research, therefore, is improvement of capacity estimates.

We like to keep up to date with everything going on and we’ve had a
few studies looking at capacity. An interesting study a few years ago
looked at efficiency factors. The study found that about 2% of the
available storage space in deep saline aquifers is actually usable.
Other studies since have found even lower numbers.

Most current CCS projects are pilot schemes or demonstration
projects. How do we go about implementing more large-scale
projects?

We’re also planning a future study looking at the differences
between static and dynamic capacity. Static capacity simply looks
at how much of the available storage space can be used, whereas
dynamic capacity considers the injection scenario, where the wells
are, how far apart they are, and the length of time injection will be
occurring for.

There are a few larger-scale projects in the pipeline, such as the
Gorgon Project in Australia which is due to come online in 2014.
The UK competition (which includes one billion pounds of capital
funding) is also looking at the potential for larger projects. We really
need these larger projects to come online so that we can learn from
them.

Do your research programmes consider the safety of CCS and
how this is communicated to the general public?
We run a set of research networks that have meetings once a year.
One of these is a social research network which looks into the public
perception of CCS. The IEA itself doesn’t do any work directly with
the public though.

So is the major barrier to progress a scientific one or a political
one?
The majority of projects that have been cancelled or put on hold
have been for political or economic reasons, but that’s not to say
that there aren’t technical issues. The ZeroGen project in Australia, for example, was cancelled for technical reasons because
there wasn’t adequate storage space. But for a project to get going,
it does have have a fair amount of government subsidy because
they’re not cheap, especially the first project of a certain kind.

It has been suggested that we need 3,500 projects the size of the
Sleipner CCS scheme in Norway in order to make a significant
contribution to GHG mitigation. But the number of projects likely
to be in operation over the next few decades is much less than
this. Are we ever going to be able to achieve these ambitious
targets?
The IEA CCS Technology Roadmap suggests that we need 100
CCS projects by 2020. We commissioned a study which found that
a G8 target of 20 CCS projects by 2020 is achievable with the right
investment inputs but that the IEA target is not really possible! However, the target of 100 projects might be realized by 2028. What

GE

Interview conducted by Tim Middleton (University of
Cambridge) at the 2012 EGU General Assembly

LOG

the official blog

w
.
g
o
o
l
r
o
d
e
press.c
g
u
g
e
/
/
:
om
http
9

Letter from the General Assembly
Programme Committee Chair
Gert-Jan Reichart reflects on this year’s meeting
It was a very energetic General Assembly for me this year – the
first as programme chair. Fortunately, I benefited from the great
organizational infrastructure developed over the years by conference-organiser Copernicus and previous chairs. The result was a
very successful meeting with over 11,000 participants, 4,436 oral
presentations and 9,092 posters. I very much enjoyed the lively scientific discussions in some of the sessions, as well as the meetings
with colleagues from all over the world. For me, this is what makes
the EGU General Assembly the most important meeting of the year.

without changing the general concept of the meeting. After all, the
large number of participants is indicative of our community’s satisfaction with the Assembly.
The organization of the next General Assembly is underway, with
our first planning meeting scheduled already. I will do my best for
the 2013 Assembly to be a similar success. At the same time, I
realize that the success of the meeting mainly depends on you,
conveners, participants, and audience. Please use the EGU and
its Assembly as it is intended: as a platform to present your newest scientific results, to communicate with fellow scientists, and to
inform decision makers on the geosciences. I hope to see you all
again in Vienna in 2013!

The newly introduced smartphone app helped me navigate the conference, not only by showing me the scientific programme, but also
by providing maps with the location of the different rooms. But while
the app worked perfectly, there were some complaints concerning
the accessibility of the Internet. This is, of course, essential as the
meeting tries to be visible on social media and we promote blogging, tweeting and so on. Although we invested considerably this
year in the accessibility of the Internet at the conference centre,
somehow we were confronted with the limit of what was technically
possible. Next year we will have to do our very best again to try to
optimize the wireless network.

Gert-Jan Reichard
2012 Programme Committee Chair

The high quality of the sessions, both in the different divisions and
at Union level, was a feature of the meeting. In addition to our core
business, the scientific presentations, we organized several geofocused side events. The photo exhibition showing the devastation left behind by last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan
impressed me. There was also an elegant presentation of silica with
all kinds of different minerals and shapes. And the Geocinema featured films on a wide variety of subjects.
The success of the General Assembly is, at the same time, our
greatest pitfall. Rooms were overfull at times, something difficult to
avoid with the large number of parallel sessions we have. Should
we reconsider the concept of the General Assembly? This summer
we will start a working group to try and come up with new ideas,

Gert-Jan Reichart, a researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences,
Utrecht University, is also the president of the EGU Biogeosciences Division.

PEN ACCESS IMAGE REPOSITORY

www.imaggeo.net
10

Division reports
News brought to you by six of EGU’s division presidents
In each edition of GeoQ, we select several division presidents to
contribute a report updating members with news from their division.
Issue 2 gives voice to Stefano Nativi of Earth and Space Science
Informatics (ESSI), Markku Poutanen of Geodesy (G), Huw Davies
of Geodynamics (GD), Walter Schmidt of Geosciences Instrumentation and Data Systems (GI), Andreas Lang of Geomorphology
(GM), and Nick Arndt of Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology &
Volcanology (GMPV).

Earth and Space Science Informatics
2012 GA meeting in Vienna: The 2012 General Assembly meeting was a great success for the ESSI Division. Our sessions went
well, in many cases doubling the number of attendees compared to
previous years.

The GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) aims to provide
decision-support tools to a wide variety of users. It is simultaneously
addressing nine areas of critical importance to people and society:
dissasters, heltah, energy, climate, agriculture, ecosystems, biodiversity,
water and weather. (From www.earthobservations.org.)

2012 Ian McHarg Division Medal: The 2012 Ian McHarg Medal
is awarded to Peter Fox for his contribution to recognising the fundamental importance of establishing informatics as a genuine discipline within the Earth sciences. Peter was born in Tasmania, has
been working in the US for many years, and has an Irish passport.
In Vienna, Peter gave an inspiring and visionary lecture in an overcrowded room. After the lecture, ESSI offered a lunch to honor
Peter.

one exception, lecture rooms were sufficiently large for the audience. Number of sessions and submitted abstracts were slightly
smaller than last year, but not significantly compared to the average during the last five years. Most popular sessions (by number
of abstracts and by number of participants in oral sessions) were
related to gravity satellites. A gravity change on a global scale is
under intensive investigation because it is related to the fate of glaciers and sea level rise.

2012 Vening Meinesz Medal: The 2012 Geodesy Division Vening
Meinesz Medal was awarded to C.-K. Shum for his pioneering work
on the recent developments in geodetic techniques that have made
profound contributions to the Earth sciences through the precise
measurement of mass transports within the Earth system.
Geodesy Division officers and committees: Division officers
were confirmed and approved in the Geodesy Business Meeting:

Looking for a new division president: ESSI is looking for a new
president. If you are interested, please submit your application
through the EGU website once the call for applications opens over
the summer.

• President Markku Poutanen, Vice-Presidents Michael Schmidt and
Johannes Bouman. A new president will be elected in November;
candidates are sought for in due time before the autumn nomination.
• Vening Meinesz Medal committee: four past medallists and an ex
officio Geodesy division president and EGU Award Committee chair
(both non-voting). Second-year medallist chairing the committee.
2013 committee: C.-K. Schum, Harald Schuh (chair), Philip Woodworth, Susanna Zerbini (in addition to Markku Poutanen and Alberto
Montanari).
• Outstanding Young Scientist Award committee: division president,
vice-presidents, and past medallist.
• Outstanding Student Poster Award committee: division president
and vice-presidents.
• Programme committee for 2013 GA program: division president,
vice presidents, and one or two others to cover the whole field of
geodesy.

Contribution to international programmes: In the field of informatics applied to Earth and Space disciplines, the ESSI Division
confirmed its commitment to inform, contribute, and reach out to the
EGU community about important initiatives and programmes that
are ongoing at the European and international levels. They include:
the European INSPIRE directive, the GEOSS and Eye On Earth initiatives, and the US EarthCube programme, among others.
Stefano Nativi
ESSI Division President

Geodesy
2012 GA meeting in Vienna: The 2012 General Assembly in
Vienna was very good; the sessions were well attended and, with

Markku Poutanen
G Division President

11

trapped and buried people. None-destructive monitoring means to
find and analyse archeological artifacts are used to restore damaged buildings or detect possibly dangerous damages in bridges.

Geodynamics
The Geodynamics Programme at EGU 2012 was very exciting with
sessions on topics ranging from the planets, to the core, through
mantle, and lithosphere/asthenosphere to the crust. Other sessions focussed on processes such as subduction, ridges, localization, anisotropy, basins, plate tectonics; and others discussed the
geodynamics of regions like the Atlantic, Laurasia craton and Arctic. There were also very successful sessions on specialized topics such as computational geodynamic methods, new methods to
observe deformation, and heat flow and hydrothermal circulation.
The oral and poster components of all sessions were very vibrant.
The GD Division continued its tradition of having a strong co-organized programme with relevant cognate divisions – including sessions on such topics as the Alpine-Himalayan collision, analogue
modelling, mantle mineralogy, glacial isostatic adjustment and surface processes. In total there were 17 division-led sessions, and
36 in total including co-organized sessions. This involved over 400
presentations in division-led sessions, and over 1,000 presentations in total. There were nearly exactly two poster presentations for
every one oral presentation.

Division program 2012/13: The session topics developed during
the past year will be maintained for 2013 with possibly joined session according to submitted contributions:
• Data Networks and Analysis: from general system design to largescale European research infrastructures and data publishing;
• Atmosphere/Ocean Monitoring and Space Instrumentation;
• Earth Surface Investigation: instrumentation for sub-surface, surface structure and historical artifact monitoring and investigations.
These areas are supported by dedicated science officers arranging
activities in their field during the year.

Recently launched GI journal: The EGU Open Access journal
was launched in autumn 2011. A well-attended inauguration party
was held during the 2012 General Assembly. By now about 15 articles have been submitted, the first four passed the referee process
and are published in their final form. The first special issue related
to the instrumentation on board a major European space mission is
under preparation. Contributions from all fields covered by the GI
division are welcome.

The highlight of the division programme was the excellent Love
Medal lecture of Yanick Ricard (Universite de Lyon 1) on mantle
dynamics on the Wednesday evening. The Division Outstanding
Young Scientist Richard Katz (University of Oxford) gave an exciting lecture on two-phase flow related to ridges on the Monday. The
Division Business Meeting saw the presentation of the Outstanding
Student Poster prize to Robert Myhill (University of Cambridge) –
collected in his absence by Tim Middleton, – and there was also
a very useful discussion of future improvements for the General
Assembly.
Huw Davies
GD Division President

Walter Schmidt
GI Division President

Geomorphology
The Geomorphology programme at the 2012 General Assembly
continued the success of past years and saw a further increase in
abstract numbers by 9% (compared to 2011), confirming the Assembly’s place as a leading annual event for the GM Division. A total
of 576 abstracts (896 including co-organized sessions) were presented filling Room 21 all week, two full days in Room 22, and several other locations across the conference centre.

Geosciences Instrumentation and Data Systems
2012 GA meeting in Vienna: With 14 sessions and a 24% increase
of submitted abstracts compared to 2011, the 2012 General Assembly was a great success for the GI division. The co-organization
and co-listing with other divisions’ sessions supported well the interdisciplinary role of the division for Geosciences Instrumentation &
Data Systems. The division programme was this time divided into
the groups Data Networks and Analysis, Atmosphere and Ocean
Monitoring and Space Instrumentation, and Earth Surface Investigation Methods, providing a better focus for the very wide range of
topics covered by the GI division.

The 2012 Bagnold Medal has been awarded to Gregory E. Tucker
for his innovative modeling and field studies leading to fundamental
advances in our understanding of the way processes and landscape
elements interact in the genesis of landforms, and for providing new
insights on the importance of temporal variability of the driving

Highlights from the 2012 GA presentations: New trends for integrating access to data with refereed scientific publications were
presented from research institutes, libraries and publishing companies. The miniaturization of instruments and their cross-disciplinary
application were the subject of many presentations like miniaturized automatic infrared spectroscopes for in situ analysis of planetary dust grains on Mars, or for monitoring atmospheric trace
gases from small unmanned airplanes, providing real-time information for weather-related catastrophe management. Earth penetrating radars, developed for geoscience research, were used to locate

Patterns in the landform by Basudev Biswal, distributed by EGU under a
Creative Commons licence.

12

GMPV–VGP will co-sponsor sessions at the AGU Fall Meeting:
four proposed sessions have been identified and we will contact
the conveners to establish whether they are interested in having
GMPV–VGP co-sponsorship. It is also planned to organize four
GMPV–VGP sessions at EGU2013. To assure this activity, we plan
to appoint an ‘interactional secretary’ within GMPV. If VGP agrees,
the same person would also serve on the VGP committee. A further
link at the division level with AOGS will also be explored.

forces of geomorphic systems. The Medal Lecture was preceded
by a reception sponsored by the British Society for Geomorphology
and the Journal of Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.
The 2012 Outstanding Young Scientists Award was awarded to
Veerle Vanacker for her novel approach to distinguish between natural benchmarks and accelerated erosion rates in mountain environments under pressure of land use change. She also gave the
2012 Penck Lecture.

Kuno award lecture at EGU 2013: The Kuno Award is given by
VGP but no Medal Lecture is given at AGU. Katie Kelly, the 2011
recipient, gave a lecture in a GMPV session. We agreed to continue
this practice in 2013 – the Kuno medalist would be invited to EGU
2013 and if he/she accepts, would give a talk in an appropriate session. We will explore the possibility of obtaining travel support from
an organization such as EAG or EMU.

Pauline Dieras received the 2011 Outstanding Student Poster
award for her poster ‘Controls on initial oxbow sedimentation as
observed within recently cut-off channels of the Ain River, France’.
The workshops for young researchers were further highlights of the
2012 programme. They focused on ‘writing papers and research
proposals in geomorphology’ and ‘pitfalls, statistical and otherwise, in analysis of environmental data’. Thanks go to Stuart Lane,
Mike Ellis, and James Kirchner. The great success and excellent
feedback received stimulates us to continue workshops for young
researchers as part of the Assembly programme in future years.

Committee membership: We discussed appointment of GMPV
members to VGP award committees and vice versa. The composition of the 2012 medal committees has been voted on so any cross
appointments will start in early 2013 for VGP, and in April for GMPV.
Reciprocal agreement regarding newsletters: We will also
explore whether GMPV members could have access to VGP mailings and vice versa, and will investigate means of assuring that
news of GMVP activities are given in the existing VGP newsletter
and website. In the future VGP news will be added to the GMPV
page on the EGU website and in other appropriate EGU newsletters.

One focus of the division activities this year was enhancing ties
with other geomorphology organizations for improving information
exchange between associations. The aims of this innitiative are to
strengthen the visibility of geomorphology as scientific discipline of
relevance to societies, to join forces in supporting the next generation of geomorphologists, and to help shape the agenda in research
programmes. Besides a round table discussion on ‘Geomorphology
in Europe’ to establish the dialog between associations in Europe,
also a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the
Division and the International Association of Geomorphologists.

In addition to these actions, we are also opening discussions with
representatives of the MRP (Mineral Rock Physics) Division at
AGU. This interaction will also include the EMRP (Earth Magnetism
and Rock Physics) Division of EGU.

For further details please consult the presentation from the Division
Business Meeting on the EGU website.

Nicholas Arndt
GMPV Division President

Andreas Lang
GM Division President

Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology
At EGU 2012, four GMPV sessions were co-sponsored by the Volcanology-Geochemistry-Petrology (VGP) Division of AGU and by
other organizations (European Association of Geochemistry, Society of Economic Geologists, Society for Geology Applied to Mineral
Deposits). This collaboration emerged from an initiative taken by the
presidents of the two divisions, myself for GMPV and Steve Sparks
for VGP. Plans for future collaboration, as agreed during discussions with Catherine McCammon, president elect of VGP who was
at EGU2012, are outlined below.

EGU awards and medals
Awardees were honored at the 2012 General Assembly
EGU awards and medals are presented annually in recognition of
scientific excellence in the Earth, space and planetary sciences, or
service to the community. This year’s awardees, listed below, were
honored at the EGU Medal Ceremony on Tuesday 24 April.

Division Outstanding Young Scientists Award
Atmospheric Sciences
To Diana Rose for outstanding contributions to the elucidation of
the influence of atmospheric aerosol particles on the formation of
clouds.

Climate: Past, Present & Future
To Didier M. Roche for his innovative development of forward models of isotopic proxies and his contribution to the understanding of
past climate changes.

Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership
Awarded to Michael Ghil for his leading contributions to theoretical climate dynamics; his innovative observational studies involving model assimilation of satellite data in meteorology, oceanography and space physics; the breadth of his interdisciplinary studies,
including macroeconomics; and also for his extensive supervision
and mentoring of scores of graduate and postdoctoral students.

Cryospheric Sciences
To Gaël Durand for his contributions in the understanding of polar
ice dynamics from micro-scale to macro-scale.
Energy, Resources, and the Environment
To Suzanne Hangx for her outstanding contribution to understanding the mechanical and chemical effects of CO2 on rock materials,
in the context of geological storage of CO2.

Jean Dominique Cassini Medal & Honorary Membership
Awarded (posthumously) to Angioletta Coradini in recognition of her
important and wide range of work in planetary sciences and Solar
System formation, and her leading role in the development of space
infrared instrumentation for planetary exploration.

Geodesy
To Xavier Collilieux for his significant contributions towards improved
methods and procedures in computing global terrestrial reference
frames and for his studies of surface loading effects therein.

Geodynamics
To Richard Foa Katz for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of the mechanics of Earth’s fluid-solid systems.

Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists
Awarded to Aikaterini Radioti for her remarkable work in the field
of auroral dynamics of Jupiter and Saturn, to which she contributed with original ideas based on combined studies of remote
auroral and in situ magnetospheric data. Also awarded to Encarnación Ruiz-Agudo for her ground-breaking work on the structure
of mineral surfaces, on fluid-mineral interaction and on the influence of organic and inorganic additives on the growth of crystals
in multicomponent aqueous solutions. To Lieven Clarisse for his
outstanding contribution to exploiting remote atmospheric sensing
techniques to improve our understanding of emission and transport
processes of ash and gases in relation to various natural hazardous
processes. And to Stephanie Henson for her fundamental contribution to the study of marine ecosystems.

Geomorphology
To Veerle Vanacker for her novel approach to distinguish between
natural benchmark and accelerated erosion rates in mountain environments under pressure of land use change.
Hydrological Sciences
To Giuliano Di Baldassarre for his remarkable contribution to understanding and communicating the impact of global changes on flood
risk.
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences
To Claudia Cherubini for valuable contributions to the hydrogeological modeling of groundwater applied to resource management, with
specific approaches for coastal fractured aquifers, and for applying
advanced geo-statistical techniques to model environmental and
anthropogenic variables.

Union Service Award
Awarded to Bruce D. Malamud in recognition of his innovative and
organized service for the Union as Chair of the Programme Committee, and his exceptional dedication as President of the Division
on Natural Hazards.

Soil System Sciences
To Claudio Zaccone for his contribution to understanding the role
of humification processes in ombrotrophic bog profiles and the
14

Union awardees and EGU Council members at the Medal Ceremony at the 2012 General Assembly.

Louis Agassiz Medal – Cryospheric Sciences
To Ian Joughin for outstanding contributions to the study of the
dynamics and mass balance of polar ice sheets using differential
SAR interferometry and other techniques that he has helped to
pioneer.

Solar-Terrestrial Sciences
To Alejandro Luque for his outstanding contribution to the understanding of the electrodynamics of plasma streamers found in Transient Luminous Events occurring in the mesosphere of the Earth.

Ian McHarg Medal – Earth and Space Science Informatics
To Peter Fox for his contribution to recognising the fundamental
importance of establishing informatics as a genuine discipline within
the Earth sciences.

Tectonics and Structural Geology
To André R. Niemeijer for his exceptional work on the effects of
fluid-rock interactions and fabric development on rock and fault
mechanical properties.

Robert Wilhelm Bunsen Medal – Geochemistry, Mineralogy,
Petrology & Volcanology
To William F. McDonough for his outstanding contribution to our
understanding of the geochemical composition and evolution of the
solid Earth. His ground-breaking research in defining the major and
trace element composition of primitive mantle and of modern mantle reservoirs has become a cornerstone of geochemical investigation of the Earth’s interior and will form the basis for further investigations by generations of geochemists.

Division Medals
Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal – Atmospheric Sciences
To Adrian Simmons in recognition of his outstanding and diverse
scientific contributions to dynamic meteorology and numerical
weather prediction over the past four decades.
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky Medal – Biogeosciences
To Jean-Pierre Gattuso for creative and scholarly contributions to
biogeosciences at the interface between microbial ecology, coral
ecology, biogeochemistry and chemical oceanography.

Vening Meinesz Medal – Geodesy
To Che-Kwan Shum for his pioneering work on the recent developments in geodetic techniques that have made profound contributions to the Earth sciences through the precise measurement of
mass transports within the Earth system.

Milutin Milankovic Medal – Climate: Past, Present & Future
To Wolfgang Berger for his pioneering contributions to understanding the imprint of orbital forcing on the marine carbonate system
and its interaction with atmospheric CO2 concentration and for his
ground-breaking studies on isotope geochemistry.

Augustus Love Medal – Geodynamics
To Yanick Ricard for fundamental contributions to geodynamics
through studies of how geoid, true polar wander, topography, seismic tomography and plate motions can be used to probe the mantle
viscosity structure, mantle mixing and convective flow.

Hans Oeschger Medal – Climate: Past, Present & Future
To Michael Mann for his significant contributions to understanding decadal-centennial scale climate change over the last two millennia and for pioneering techniques to synthesize patterns and
northern hemispheric time series of past climate using proxy data
reconstructions.

Ralph Alger Bagnold Medal – Geomorphology
To Gregory E. Tucker for his innovative modeling and field studies
leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the way
processes and landscape elements interact in the genesis of landforms as well as for providing new insights on the importance of
the temporal variability of the driving forces of geomorphic systems.

15

John Dalton Medal – Hydrological Sciences
To Kurt Roth for his extraordinary creativity and pioneering contributions to flow and transport processes in the vadose zone, and its
interactions with the saturated zone and with the atmosphere.

Beno Gutenberg Medal – Seismology
To Michel Campillo in recognition of the outstanding contributions
he has made to the study of earth structure and seismic sources
using novel methods.

Petrus Peregrinus Medal – Earth Magnetism & Rock Physics
To Frank J. Lowes for innovative research in geomagnetism, notably
the first experimental geodynamo model, the spatial geomagnetic
power spectrum, error analysis of satellite data, and leadership in
the community developing the International Geomagnetic Research
Field.

Philippe Duchaufour Medal – Soil System Sciences
To José Torrent for his contribution on the mineralogy of iron oxides
and the iron and phosphorus biogeochemical cycle in the soil-plant
system.
Julius Bartels Medal – Solar-Terrestrial Sciences
To Michael Lockwood for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of the terrestrial magnetosphere and the
coupling between solar variability, magnetospheric and ionospheric
processes, and the terrestrial climate.

Lewis Fry Richardson Medal – Nonlinear Geosciences
To Harry Swinney for his pioneering experiments on deterministic
chaos and highly original laboratory models of geophysical flows.
Fridtjof Nansen Medal – Ocean Sciences
To Pierre-Yves Le Traon for his excellent contributions to and leadership in establishing satellite altimetry as a quantitative observational technique for research on mesoscale ocean variability, ocean
circulation and sea level.

Stephan Mueller Medal – Tectonics & Structural Geology
To Jacques Malavieille in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the integration of field-based studies with analog modeling
to study lithospheric deformation.

David Bates Medal – Planetary & Solar System Sciences
To Hans Rickman for his fundamental contributions to cometary
physics and the analysis of non-gravitational forces in comets.

Henry Darcy Medal – Hydrological Sciences
To Tissa H. Illangasekare for fundamental contributions to engineering hydrology and exceptional support to the hydrological
community.

Louis Néel Medal – Earth Magnetism & Rock Physics
To James R. Rice for his seminal contributions to our fundamental
understanding of strain localization, poromechanics and friction and
his elegant and systematic studies have elucidated fault mechanics
and the coupling with hydrologic and thermal processes during all
phases of the earthquake cycle.

An earlier version of this article was published on the EGU website

Research on Flood Resilience and
Europe: achievements and future
Report from the conveners of the EG4 Union session at this year’s General Assembly
Vienna, 26 April 2012 – The extent and consequences of recent
flood events in Europe and worldwide showed that the existing flooddefence structures do not guarantee a sufficient protection level for
people and properties. Considering the uncertainty of future conditions shaped by the main drivers of urban development such as
climate change and rapid urbanization, the situation is getting even
more severe. Where defences exist, the residual risk will increase
as the probability will increase that they fail or be overtopped by
severe floods. In this unfavourably changing environment, a substantial rethinking of the existing strategies and paradigm shift from
the traditional approaches is required in order to cope with future
flooding in an adequate way.
16

During the EGU General Assembly (Vienna, 22–27 April, 2012), the
session Research on Flood Resilience and Europe (EG4) broadly
covered the current research on Flood Resilience in Europe and
worldwide. The follow-up splinter meeting ‘Future of European
Research on Flood Resilience’ issued the resulting recommendations for future research.

vulnerable urban areas. It emphasized that there is a need for demonstration projects that can show the findings presented during the
session. Furthermore, the development of standards for technology
and tools should be the focus of further research, with unified test
standards for flood resilience technology being a matter of increasing urgency. Relevant flood resilience tools and models should see
the development of standards for data management and presentation of results and uncertainty to decision makers.

The EG4 session was called and organized by the SMARTeST project in the framework of the programme group Europe and Geoscience of the EGU General Assembly. Other 7th Framework projects
such as FloodProbe, and CORFU were represented, as well as the
Interreg project RainGain, the projects BlueGreenDream (pending),
CAPHAZ-NET, FREEMAN, MPRINTS, WATER2ADAPT and the
UNESCO-IHE/TU Delft Resilience Group.

Leading speakers from research and industry around Europe
broadly covered the current research on Flood Resilience in Europe
and worldwide by presenting the findings of these projects obtained
through joint investigation, implementation, and dissemination of
short to medium term strategies.

SMARTeST is holding an international conference and flood resilience technology exhibition, in Athens in September 2012, and further national events are being held in the seven partner countries.
This article was originally published on the EGU website

The session was followed by the splinter meeting Future of European Research on Flood Resilience that called for further research
in flood resilience technology, systems and tools to protect

Short report on 2012 General Assembly
Press Centre activities
This year’s General Assembly, with over 13,500 presentations and
more than 11,200 participating scientists, was one of the most successful to date. In addition to its scientific achievements, the conference also saw keen media participation and reporting.
The Press Centre, run for the first time by EGU’s Media and Communications Officer Bárbara Ferreira, welcomed over 40 media participants, including journalists, press officers, science writers, and
EGU guest bloggers. The Centre hosted 12 press conferences on
topics ranging from flood disasters and sea-level rise to mitigation
of tsunami risk and space weather. The conferences were not only
well attended by the journalists at the Assembly, but also had hundreds of live views via a webstreaming link.
Media participants attended press conferences and scientific sessions, interviewed scientists, and reported extensively on the General Assembly. The conference has featured in over 100 online,
print and radio articles published by the BBC, Bloomberg News,
Spiegel, to name a few. News agencies such as Agence FrancePresse, Austria Presse Agentur, and the Spanish Agencia EFE also
extensively covered research presented at the General Assembly.

The EGU is grateful to all those who worked at the Press Centre, in
particular Tim Middleton, Julia Wöger, Celso Gomes, and Suzanne
Voice, as well as for everyone at the conference-organizer Copernicus, especially Katja Gänger. Thank you also to the scientists who
participated in this year’s press conferences and, of course, to the
hard-working journalists the EGU had the pleasure to host.
This article was originally published on the EGU website

17

EGU 2012 Photo Competition winners
All images are available from EGU’s Open Access image repository, Imaggeo
were out exploring the lake basin, and it is only one of many streams
feeding the lake.”

The selection committee received close to 300 photos for this year’s
EGU Photo Competition, in most areas covered by Union’s activities. From these, ten finalist photographs were exhibited at the 2012
General Assembly, where conference participants voted on their
favourites. The three most-voted photographs, and winning entries,
are:

Supraglacial lakes are created when water forms in depressions
on top of a glacier, remaining there until it dissipates by seeping
through crevasses, or cracks in the ice sheet. Despite their sometimes impressive size, supraglacial lakes may drain in a matter of
hours under the right conditions, when the pressure they exert on
the ice causes it to crack creating a sometimes spectacular lake
draining event.

This photo won 2nd prize at the 2012 General Assembly Photo Competition and, according to the photographer, Melissa S. Bukovsky,
epitomizes the idea that an expensive camera is not a necessity for
taking great photos. “You just need to know how to use what you
have. I travel with a point and shoot that fits in my back pocket,”
she explains.
Currently a Project Scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, Bukovsky snapped this shot on one of her many
work related trips. “This picture of a bursting mud bubble in a boiling
pool of mud was taken just outside of the Wai-O-Tapu geothermal
area near Rotorua, New Zealand. The area is part of New Zealand’s
Taupo volcanic zone. I stayed in this area for a few days of holiday
before traveling back to the US after working in Melbourne for the
summer. Aside from all of the fantastic geothermal phenomena to
see in that area, there are numerous hot springs that are great for
relaxing in.”

Draining of supraglacial lakes may have important environmental
consequences and may even, as warming temperatures further
increase meltwater volumes, affect rates of sea-level rise by accelerating the rate by which ice sheets slide into the ocean.
Ian Joughin, from the University of Washington Polar Science
Center, took this breathtaking photo under freezing conditions,
earning him the 1st Prize at the 2012 General Assembly Photo
Competition.
“This image was taken as part of a project investigating the rapid
drainage of supraglacial lakes in Greenland,” he explains. “Each
year, these lakes, which often are a few kilometres across and 10
or more metres deep, fill with melt water. If the water can find an
open crack, it fills the crack and the greater density of water relative
to ice allows it to hydro-fracture through the full thickness (~1km)
of the ice sheet, causing the entire lake to drain rapidly (< 2hours).
This picture shows a large melt stream that we encountered as we

Mud pools, hot springs of bubbling mud, form in high-temperature
geothermal areas where water is in short supply. The little water that
is available rises to the surface at a spot where the soil is rich in volcanic ash, clay, and other fine particulates. The viscosity of the mud
varies, from fluid during the rainy season to viscous in drier months.
The Wai-O-Tapu geothermal complex has been protected as a scenic reserve since 1931 and it remains a major tourist attraction.

18

This year’s icy spell brought Switzerland its coldest weather since
1987, the year it experienced its lowest ever recorded temperature. Lucien von Gunten, Science Officer at PAGES (Past Global
Changes), explains the exceptional circumstances behind this captivating shot, taken earlier this year. “In Versoix, near the Lake of
Geneva, the combination of low temperatures and strong easterly
winds led to an unusual natural spectacle as the lake shores were
partly covered with ice. Images of cars and boats under a thick ice
shell were shown in the international press. Next to these popular eye-catchers one could also admire smaller scale ice structure,
such as those depicted on this photograph, which covers an area of
30×30cm.” This photo won 3rd Prize at the 2012 General Assembly
photo competition.

Icy landscape

Exceptional weather events, such as extreme temperatures,
drought, or tropical storms and hurricanes, have increased in frequency over the past 50 years, partly as a result of human-induced
climate change.
3 rd prize (135 votes): Icy landscape by Lucien von Gunten, distributed by EGU
under a Creative Commons licence.

More pictures of Switzerland during this year’s freeze can be seen
here.

Ice is a hazardous beauty, ephemeral in nature and, under the right
conditions, capable of dominating landscapes. Earlier this year,
while North America enjoyed an unusually mild winter, central and
eastern Europe experienced brutal cold spells. The continent witnessed widespread freezing as cold air swept south from Siberia,
claiming hundreds of lives, knocking out power supplies, and disrupting transport services. In Poland and the Ukraine, temperatures
dropped as low as -33C and in Italy over 80,000 citizens were left
without electricity after power lines were felled by trees.

After the General Assembly, the three photos were highlighted
on GeoLog, the EGU Blog. The texts were originally publish
on the blog’s weekly Imaggeo on Mondays series.

Join the EGU Blog Network!
To complement our official blog, we are launching a blog network
related to the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. If you are a scientist who likes blogging about your research, or about geosciences
in general, we would like to hear from you.

Apart from your site gaining exposure by having its name and a
short introduction listed on the EGU website, we will also share
highlights of your work on our social media channels, and may ask
you to contribute original content on our official blog.

In a few months, the EGU blog will migrate from WordPress to the
EGU website, and we would like to have other bloggers joining us
within an EGU Blog Network. The aim of this project is to foster
a diverse community of geoscientist bloggers and to offer them a
place to interact with each other and with the Union.

If you’d like your blog to be considered for our network, fill
out this form. Please note that only blogs in English will be
considered.
Feel free to contact the EGU Media and Communications Officer
Bárbara Ferreira if you have any questions.

The network would be similar to Nature Network or Scientific American Blog Network, with all blogs having a unified design and general theme – Earth, space and planetary sciences – but with each
blogger being responsible for the content of their own blog.

Happy blogging!
This article was originally published on the EGU blog

19

International Innovation interview:
EGU Executive Secretary
Philippe Courtial details the work of the Union in assisting scientists
and improving the availability of accurate scientific data
Could you outline the main intention and mission of the European
Geosciences Union?

Mentoring Programme was recently launched) and by means of a
quarterly newsletter distributed to all its members.

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is Europe’s premier geosciences organization, and is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence
in the geosciences, planetary, and space sciences for the benefit of humanity worldwide. It was established in September 2002
as a merger of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) and the
European Union of Geosciences (EUG), and has headquarters in
Munich, Germany. The EGU is a non-profit, international, and interdisciplinary learned association of scientists, with over 11,000 members from all over the world.

EGU also plays a role in identifying and drawing attention to societal problems which could be addressed by the scientific work of its
members, and in fostering its communication to the non-scientific
public.

Dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the geosciences and the
planetary and space sciences, what benefits does the EGU bring
to humanity?
Some of the EGU Divisions cover topics that are of great societal
importance, such as energy, natural hazards and climate change.
Furthermore, many of the EGU General Assembly sessions, sponsored or co-sponsored conference series, topical meetings, training schools and short courses, as well as papers published in EGU
journals, tackle such issues, which have significant public impact.

The objectives of the Union are to promote cooperation and discussion in Europe among scientists (including students, post-docs and
senior scientists) concerned with studies of the Earth and its environment and of planetary and space sciences, and to promote and
encourage the development of any or all of the relevant sciences,
within and outside Europe.

Would you talk us through the main challenges that geosciences
tackle and that your researchers face? Are the issues that
some of the EGU Divisions investigate being affected by human
behaviour or are they just part of the Earth’s cycles?

Moreover, what gaps has the organization filled?
EGU provides a platform to its members and to the scientific community. It hosts and organizes the largest and most prominent event
in geosciences held in Europe, the EGU General Assembly, attracting over 10,000 scientists from all over the world each year. The
conference includes over 700 different scientific sessions. Furthermore, EGU has a number of travel awards to financially assist young
scientists and others who wish to attend its General Assembly each
year (e.g. the Young Scientist’s Travel Award for Europeans, the
Adrian Gill Travel Award for a young scientist from Great Britain to
take part in a session of the Atmospheric Sciences or Ocean Sciences programme, and the Keith Runcorn Travel Award for NonEuropeans). Furthermore, EGU provides support to scientists in
the organization of conference series, topical meetings, training
schools and short courses.

Geoscientists face scientific challenges that can be, to a certain
degree, of great interest for the citizens of Europe. I would like to
highlight two of the challenges that have been reported in previous
issues of this [International Innovation] publication: Climate studies have investigated numerous mechanisms and processes for the
best knowledge of present changes. While understanding the present realities is one important point, understanding how they relate
to past climate variability is the necessary condition to apprehend
the future possibilities correctly. The demand on resources and the
impact mankind has on the environment today is enormous. The
massive input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is responsible
not only for global warming, but also for an increase in acidity of
the oceans. This so-called ocean acidification is probably affecting marine life, but how, and to what extent, is still largely unknown.
Moreover, the impact of global warming on ecosystems and possible relationships between vegetation and greenhouse gases are
still not fully understood.

In addition, EGU has a current portfolio of 14 scientific journals,
which use an innovative ‘open access’ format. As signatory of the
Berlin Open Access Initiative (Berlin Declaration on Open Access
to Knowledge in Sciences and Humanities), EGU has contributed to
Europe’s global leadership in providing open-access publications.
EGU’s open-access portfolio also includes an online geosciences
image repository (Imaggeo).

Statements made by the EGU are quoted in the media. How are
these conclusions reached?

EGU also runs a Geosciences Information for Teachers (GIFT) programme that offers teachers from elementary to high school the
opportunity to extend their knowledge in geo-scientific topics.

The EGU has issued a few position statements that can be found
on the EGU homepage. The aim of these statements is to provide
state-of-the-art research regarding a specific topic (at the time the
position statement is issued). They can be accompanied by a policy
briefing – a short document which provides more information on the
topic in question, including possible policy implications.

The Union further fosters communication between scientists through a mentoring scheme (the Women in Geosciences

20

How does the EGU ensure that science is at the heart of all it
does?
The EGU is a bottom-up Union devoted to the promotion of geosciences and to encouraging discussion between scientists. The
EGU achieves this through its General Assembly, and by organising, sponsoring or co-sponsoring conference series, topical meetings, training schools and short courses. The Union’s core activities
also include the publication of a newsletter and several openaccess scientific journals, in addition to the previously mentioned
outreach activities.
EGU staff ready for a Weißwurst Frühstück on Carnival day. From left
to right: Edvard Glücksman (Science Communications Fellow), Karen
Resenberger (Secretary), Philippe Courtial (Executive Secretary), Robert
Barsch (Webmaster & System Admin), and Bárbara Ferreira (Media and
Communications Officer).

Many institutions are struggling to keep up with the pace of
science communication – an essential part of any environment
organization today – how vital is it to engage not only the
general public but policy makers unfamiliar with the vocabulary
researchers use? What activities are you involved in facilitating
an increased dialogue between scientists and decision makers?

years (EGU has had about 12,000 and 11,200 members for 2010
and 2011 respectively), and our annual meetings have not demonstrated a decrease in participation (10,463 and 10,725 attendees in
2010 and 2011 respectively). Furthermore, EGU offers free online
access to its publications, which is a great deal when budget cuts
are affecting some institution libraries.

We are actively working to increase recognition of the EGU, not only
among the scientific community, but also among decision makers,
the media, and the wider public as an authoritative source of information in the Union’s disciplines. For this reason, the EGU has hired
a Media and Communications Officer, Bárbara T. Ferreira, to join
the EGU Executive Office in Munich. Providing independent scientific expertise to politicians and decision makers is an important part
of our communications strategy, one that our media officer will seek
to implement in the short term.

To what extent does the EGU cooperate internationally? What
challenges has this posed, and how has the EGU overcome
these?
In addition to the activities mentioned previously, EGU also aims to
establish liaisons with other scientific organizations, both within and
outside Europe, to mutual benefits. Currently, we have a cooperation with the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Geological
Society of America (GSA), the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society
(AOGS), the Japan Geosciences Union (JpGU) and the European
Association of Geoscientists & Engineers (EAGE). In 2011, EGU
signed a Memorandum of Understanding with AGU and AOGS for
further cooperation with these organizations.

Regarding the dissemination of your activities, the EGU is
actively engaged in a wide range of undertakings. What other
activities, other than those mentioned, is the EGU busy with?
Bárbara T. Ferreira has been actively coordinating media-related
scientific communications between the EGU and its membership,
the working media, and the public at large. Aside from preparing
press releases and taking over the editorship of the EGU newsletter,
she increased the activity of EGU on social media platforms such
as Twitter (@EuroGeosciences), Facebook, and Google+. Continuing the work of EGU’s first Science Communications Postdoctoral
Fellow, Jennifer Holden, Bárbara has also been actively blogging
for EGU at GeoLog.

Would you like to draw our attention to any other aspect of the
EGU’s work?
The bottom-up approach of EGU encourages the participation of
young scientists in the affairs of the Union, including its General
Assembly. For example, EGU actively seeks for young scientists
interested in organising sessions during its General Assembly.
Merit awards for young scientists at Division and Union levels have
also been created (eg. the Arne Richter Outstanding Young Scientists, the Outstanding Young Scientists, the Plinius and the Outstanding Student Poster awards). EGU has also established links
with communities of young scientists.

Do the EGU Divisions collaborate internally? What results has
this led to?
Yes, since some scientific topics are not specific to one division and
may be relevant to several. EGU encourages collaboration between
its divisions, as illustrated by the presence of inter-division sessions
(sessions co-organized by several EGU divisions) at our General
Assembly. Over 170 inter-division sessions have been scheduled at
the EGU General Assembly in 2011.

Interview (except image) reproduced with permission
from International Innovation. This leading global
dissemination publication provides unique access to
bespoke interviews, content and presentations for the wider
scientific, technology and research communities. EGU
members can subscribe free to this resource here.

What impact, if any, has the global economic downturn had on
the progression of the EGU?
The global economic downturn has had wide-reaching impacts, but
EGU activities have not suffered a great deal so far. Annual membership numbers have been relatively constant over the past two

21

Geoengineering could disrupt rainfall patterns
EGU press release highlights research published in Earth System Dynamics
A geoengineering solution to climate change could lead to significant rainfall reduction in Europe and North America, a team of
European scientists concludes. The researchers studied how models of the Earth in a warm, CO2 -rich world respond to an artificial
reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface.
The study is now published in Earth System Dynamics, an Open
Access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
Tackling climate change by reducing the solar radiation reaching
our planet using climate engineering, known also as geoengineering, could result in undesirable effects for the Earth and humankind.
In particular, the work by the team of German, Norwegian, French,
and UK scientists shows that disruption of global and regional rainfall patterns is likely in a geoengineered climate.

Volcanic eruptions, such as the one of the Karymsky volcano (Russia) in
2004, release sulphur dioxide to the atmosphere, which has a cooling effect.
Geoengineering an ‘artificial volcano’ to mimic this release could be a
solution to global warming, but one that may have undesirable effects for the
Earth. (Photo by Alexander Belousov of the Earth Observatory of Singapore,
distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.)

“Climate engineering cannot be seen as a substitute for a policy
pathway of mitigating climate change through the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions,” they conclude in the paper.
Geoengineering techniques to reduce the amount of solar radiation
reaching the Earth’s surface range from mimicking the effects of
large volcanic eruptions by releasing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to deploying giant mirrors in space. Scientists have proposed
these sunlight-reflecting solutions as last-ditch attempts to halt
global warming.

“The impacts of these changes are yet to be addressed, but the
main message is that the climate produced by geoengineering is
different to any earlier climate even if the global mean temperature
of an earlier climate might be reproduced,” says Schmidt.
The authors note that the scenario studied is not intended to be
realistic for a potential future application of climate engineering. But
the experiment allows the researchers to clearly identify and compare basic responses of the Earth’s climate to geoengineering, laying the groundwork for more detailed future studies.

But what would such an engineered climate be like?
To answer this question, the researchers studied how four Earth
models respond to climate engineering under a specific scenario.
This hypothetical scenario assumes a world with a CO2 concentration that is four times higher than preindustrial levels, but where the
extra heat caused by such an increase is balanced by a reduction of
radiation we receive from the Sun.

“This study is the first clean comparison of different models following a strict simulation protocol, allowing us to estimate the robustness of the results. Additionally we are using the newest breed of
climate models, the ones that will provide results for the Fifth IPCC
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Report,” explains
Schmidt.

“A quadrupling of CO2 is at the upper end, but still in the range of
what is considered possible at the end of the 21st century,” says
Hauke Schmidt, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany and lead author of the paper.

The scientists used climate models developed by the UK Met
Office’s Hadley Centre, the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in France,
and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Norwegian scientists
developed the fourth Earth model used.

Under the scenario studied, rainfall strongly decreases – by about
15 percent (some 100 millimetres of rain per year) of preindustrial
precipitation values – in large areas of North America and northern
Eurasia. Over central South America, all models show a decrease
in rainfall that reaches more than 20 percent in parts of the Amazon
region. Other tropical regions see similar changes, both negative
and positive. Overall, global rainfall is reduced by about five percent
on average in all four models studied.

A tsunami wave recorded near a glacier front
Article published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Abstract
We observed a tsunami wave near the glacier front in the Temple
Fjord (Spitsbergen). Two temperature and pressure recorders were
deployed on a wire from the ice approximately 300m from the glacier front. A pressure recorder was located under them on the bottom. The vertical displacement of the ice was approximately 30cm
and the period of the tsunami wave was 90s. We attribute the generation of this wave to the displacement of the glacier similarly to the
landslide tsunami generated by the motion of a block of rocks down
the sloping bottom. The glacier motion also generated a shortperiod (12s) deformation wave in the ice cover. The measurements
allowed us to estimate the wave number of these waves and the
Young’s modulus of the ice.
Reference
Marchenko, A. V., Morozov, E. G., and Muzylev, S. V. (2012): A tsunami wave
recorded near a glacier front, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 415–419.

Drivers of flood risk change in residential areas
Article published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Abstract
The observed increase of direct flood damage over the last decades
may be caused by changes in the meteorological drivers of floods,
or by changing land-use patterns and socio-economic developments. It is still widely unknown to which extent these factors will
contribute to future flood risk changes.

inundation scenario amount to more than 360 million € for all time
steps. Based on effective values, damage estimates for the same
inundation scenario decrease from 478 million € in 1990 to 361 million € in 2000 and 348 million € in 2020 (maximum land-use scenario). Using constant values, flood risk is 111% (effective values:
146%) of the 2000 estimate in 1990 and 121% (effective values:
115%) of the 2000 estimate for the maximum land-use scenario in
2020. The quantification of driver contributions reveals that land-use
change in the form of urban sprawl in endangered areas is the main
driver of flood risk in the study area. Climate induced flood hazard
change is important but not a dominant factor of risk change in the
study area. With the historical exception of the economic effects in
Eastern Germany following the German reunification, value developments only have minor influence on the development of flood risk.

We survey the change of flood risk in terms of expected annual
damage for residential buildings in the lower part of the Mulde River
basin (Vereinigte Mulde) between 1990 and 2020 in 10-yr time
steps based on measurements and model projections. For this purpose we consider the complete risk chain from climate impact via
hydrological and hydraulic modelling to damage and risk estimation.
We analyse what drives the changes in flood risk and quantify the
contributions of these drivers: flood hazard change due to climate
change, land-use change and changes in building values.

We estimate flood risk and building losses based on constant values and based on effective (inflation adjusted) values separately.
For constant values, estimated building losses for the most extreme

23

Photo-lability of deep ocean dissolved black carbon
Article published in Biogeosciences
Abstract
Dissolved black carbon (DBC), defined here as condensed aromatics isolated from seawater via PPL solid phase extraction and quantified as benzenepolycarboxylic acid (BPCA) oxidation products, is
a significant component of the oceanic dissolved organic carbon
(DOC) pool. These condensed aromatics are widely distributed in
the open ocean and appear to be tens of thousands of years old. As
such DBC is regarded as highly refractory. In the current study, the
photo-lability of DBC, DOC and coloured dissolved organic matter
(CDOM; ultraviolet-visible absorbance) were determined over the
course of a 28 day irradiation of North Atlantic Deep Water under a
solar simulator. During the irradiation DBC fell from 1044±164nM-C
to 55±15nM-C, a 20-fold decrease in concentration. Dissolved black
carbon photo-degradation was more rapid and more extensive than
for bulk CDOM and DOC. The concentration of DBC correlated with
CDOM absorbance and the quality of DBC indicated by the ratios of
different BPCAs correlated with CDOM absorbance spectral slope,
suggesting the optical properties of CDOM may provide a proxy
for both DBC concentrations and quality in natural waters. Further,

the photo-lability of components of the DBC pool increased with
their degree of aromatic condensation. These trends indicate that a
continuum of compounds of varying photo-lability exists within the
marine DOC pool. In this continuum, photo-lability scales with aromatic character, specifically the degree of condensation. Scaling
the rapid photo-degradation of DBC to rates of DOC photo-mineralization for the global ocean leads to an estimated photo-chemical
half-life for oceanic DBC of less than 800 years. This is more than
an order of magnitude shorter than the apparent age of DBC in the
ocean. Consequently, photo-degradation is posited as the primary
sink for oceanic DBC and the apparent survival of DBC molecules in
the oceans for millennia appears to be facilitated not by their inherent inertness but by the rate at which they are cycled through the
surface ocean’s photic zone.

Global characteristics of the lunar tidal
modulation of the equatorial electrojet
derived from CHAMP observations
Article published in Annales Geophysicae
Abstract
It has been known since many decades that lunar tide has an influence on the strength of the equatorial electrojet (EEJ). There has,
however, never been a comprehensive study of the tidal effect on
a global scale. Based on the continuous magnetic field measurements by the CHAMP satellite over 10 years it is possible to investigate the various aspects of lunar effects on the EEJ. The EEJ intensity is enhanced around times when the moon is overhead or at the
antipode. This effect is particularly strong around noon, shortly after
new and full moon. The lunar tide manifests itself as a semi-diurnal
wave that precesses through all local times within one lunar month.
The largest tidal amplitudes are observed around December solstice and smallest around June solstice. The tidal wave crest lags
behind the moon phase. During December this amounts to about
four days while it is around two days during other times of the year.
We have not found significant longitudinal variations of the lunar
influence on the EEJ. When comparing the average EEJ amplitude at high solar activity with that during periods of solar minimum
conditions a solar cycle dependence can be found, but the ratio

between tidal amplitude and EEJ intensity stays the same. Actually,
tidal signatures standout clearer during times of low solar activity.
We suggest that the tidal variations are caused by a current system added to the EEJ rather than by modulating the EEJ. Gravitational forcing of the lower atmosphere by the moon and the sun is
assumed to be the driver of an upward propagating tidal wave. The
larger tidal amplitudes around December solstice can be related to
stratospheric warming events which seem to improve the conditions
for upward propagation.
The results described here have to large extent been presented as
a Julius-Bartels Medal Lecture during the General Assembly 2011
of the European Geosciences Union.

On the role of ozone in long-term trends in
the upper atmosphere-ionosphere system
Article published in Annales Geophysicae
Abstract
Origin of long-term trends in the thermosphere-ionosphere system has been discussed since the beginning of trend studies. The
two most prioritized explanations have been those via long-term
increase of atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and
long-term increase of geomagnetic activity throughout the 20th century. Secular changes of the Earth’s main magnetic field play an
important role in trends in a limited region. Recently, Walsh and
Oliver (2011) suggested that the long-term cooling of the upper thermosphere (above 200km) may be due largely to the stratospheric

ozone depletion. Here, we show that the role of ozone is very important in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere but not in the upper
thermosphere. The suggestion of Walsh and Oliver (2011) is based
on historical (before 1988) data from Saint-Santin radar, whereas
more recent data do not support their conclusion.

Reference
Laštovička, J. (2012): On the role of ozone in long-term trends in the upper
atmosphere-ionosphere system, Ann. Geophys., 30, 811–816.

The regulation of the air: a hypothesis
Article published in Solid Earth
Abstract
We propose the hypothesis that natural selection, acting on the
specificity or preference for CO2 over O2 of the enzyme rubisco
(ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase), has controlled the CO2:O2 ratio of the atmosphere since the evolution of
photosynthesis and has also sustained the Earth’s greenhouse-set
surface temperature. Rubisco works in partnership with the nitrogen-fixing enzyme nitrogenase to control atmospheric pressure.
Together, these two enzymes control global surface temperature

and indirectly the pH and oxygenation of the ocean. Thus, the coevolution of these two enzymes may have produced clement conditions on the Earth’s surface, allowing life to be sustained.

Evidence of a possible turning point in solar
UV-B over Canada, Europe and Japan
Article published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Abstract
This study examines the long-term variability of UV solar irradiances at 305nm and 325nm over selected sites in Canada, Europe
and Japan. Site selection was restricted to the availability of the
most complete UV spectroradiometric datasets during the period
1990–2011. The analysis includes the long-term variability of total
ozone, aerosol optical depth and cloud fraction at the sites studied.
The results, based on observations and modeling, suggest that over
Canada, Europe and Japan the period under study can be divided
into three sub-periods of scientific merit: the first period (1991–
1994) is the period perturbed by the Pinatubo volcanic eruption,
during which excess volcanic aerosol has enhanced the ‘conventional’ amplification factor of UV-B at ground level by an additional
factor that depends on solar elevation. The increase of the UV-B
amplification factor is the result of enhanced scattering processes

caused by the injection of huge amounts of volcanic aerosols during the perturbed period. The second period (1995–2006) is characterized by a 0.14%/yr increase in total ozone and an increasing
trend in spectral irradiance by 0.94%/yr at 305nm and 0.88%/yr at
325nm. That paradox was caused by the significant decline of the
aerosol optical depth by more than 1%/yr (the ‘brightening’ effect)
and the absence of any statistically significant trend in the cloud
fraction. The third period (2007–2011) shows statistically significant
evidence of a slowdown or even a turning point in the previously
reported upward UV-B trends over Canada, Europe and Japan.

Estimating the climate significance of halogen-driven
ozone loss in the tropical marine troposphere
Article published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Abstract
We have integrated observations of tropospheric ozone, very shortlived (VSL) halocarbons and reactive iodine and bromine species
from a wide variety of tropical data sources with the global CAMChem chemistry-climate model and offline radiative transfer calculations to compute the contribution of halogen chemistry to ozone
loss and associated radiative impact in the tropical marine troposphere. The inclusion of tropospheric halogen chemistry in CAMChem leads to an annually averaged depletion of around 10% (~2.5
Dobson units) of the tropical tropospheric ozone column, with largest effects in the middle to upper troposphere. This depletion contributes approximately -0.10W/m2 to the radiative flux at the tropical tropopause. This negative flux is of similar magnitude to the

~0.33W/m2 contribution of tropospheric ozone to present-day radiative balance as recently estimated from satellite observations. We
find that the implementation of oceanic halogen sources and chemistry in climate models is an important component of the natural
background ozone budget and we suggest that it needs to be considered when estimating both preindustrial ozone baseline levels
and long term changes in tropospheric ozone.

Revisiting Narrow Bipolar Event intracloud
lightning using the FORTE satellite
Article published in Annales Geophysicae
Abstract
The lightning stroke called a Narrow Bipolar Event, or NBE, is an
intracloud discharge responsible for significant charge redistribution. The NBE occurs within 10–20µs, and some associated process emits irregular bursts of intense radio noise, fading at shorter
timescales, sporadically during the charge transfer. In previous
reports, the NBE has been inferred to be quite different from other
forms of lightning strokes, in two ways. First, the NBE has been
inferred to be relatively dark (non-luminous) compared to other
lightning strokes. Second, the NBE has been inferred to be isolated
within the storm, usually not participating in flashes, but when it is
in a flash, the NBE has been inferred to be the flash initiator. These
two inferences have sufficiently stark implications for NBE physics that they should be subjected to further independent test, with
improved statistics. We attempt such a test with both optical and
radio data from the FORTE satellite, and with lightning-stroke data
from the Los Alamos Sferic Array.

be inferred. We then use this slant range to calculate the Effective
Radiated Power (ERP) at the radio source, in the passband 26–49
MHz. Stratifying the radio recordings by ERP into eight bins, from a
lowest bin (<5kW) to a highest bin (>140kW), we document a trend
for the radio recordings to become more isolated in time as the ERP
increases. The highest ERP bin corresponds to the intracloud emissions associated with NBEs. At the highest ERP, the only significant
probability of temporal neighbors is during times following the highERP events. In other words, when participating in a flash, the highERP emissions occur at the apparent flash initiation.

We show rigorously that by the metric of triggering the PDD optical photometer aboard the FORTE satellite, NBE discharges are
indeed less luminous than ordinary lightning. Referred to an effective isotropic emitter at the cloud top, NBE light output is inferred to
be less than ~3×108W.
To address isolation of NBEs, we first expand the pool of geolocated
intracloud radio recordings, by borrowing geolocations from either
the same flash’s or the same storm’s other recordings. In this manner we generate a pool of ~2×105 unique and independent FORTE
intracloud radio recordings, whose slant range from the satellite can

Lightning in Germany during a summer thunderstorm, by Jutta Holst,
distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

26

ESA declares end of mission for Envisat
Paris, 9 May 2012 – Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in
orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on
8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the
investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being
declared.
A team of engineers has spent the last month attempting to regain
control of Envisat, investigating possible reasons for the problem.
Despite continuous commands sent from a widespread network of
ground stations, there has been no reaction yet from the satellite.
As there were no signs of degradation before the loss of contact,
the team has been collecting other information to help understand
the satellite’s condition. These include images from ground radar
and the French Pleiades satellite.

The Envisat satellite. (Credit: ESA)

With this information, the team has gradually elaborated possible
failure scenarios. One is the loss of the power regulator, blocking
telemetry and telecommands.

Years of Envisat data have led to a better understanding of ocean
currents and chlorophyll concentrations.
In the atmosphere, the satellite observed air pollution increase in
Asia and its stability in Europe and North America, and measured
carbon dioxide and methane concentrations. Envisat also monitored the Antarctica ozone hole variations.

Another scenario is a short circuit, triggering a ‘safe mode’ – a special mode ensuring Envisat’s survival. A second anomaly may have
occurred during the transition to safe mode, leaving the satellite in
an intermediate and unknown condition.

Over land, it mapped the speed of ice streams in Antarctica and
Greenland. Its images were used regularly to update the global
maps of land use, including the effects of deforestation.

Although chances of recovering Envisat are extremely low, the
investigation team will continue attempts to re-establish contact
while considering failure scenarios for the next two months.

The outstanding performance of Envisat over the last decade led
many to believe that it would be active for years to come, at least
until the launch of the follow-on Sentinel missions.

Envisat provided crucial Earth observation data not only to scientists, but also to many operational services, such as monitoring
floods and oil spills. Its data were used for supporting civil protection authorities in managing natural and man-made disasters.

However, Envisat had already operated for double its planned lifetime, making it well overdue for retirement.
With ten sophisticated sensors, Envisat has observed and monitored Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps during its tenyear lifetime, delivering over a thousand terabytes of data.

Envisat has also contributed valuable information to the services
within Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environmental Security
(GMES) programme, paving the way for the next generation of
satellites.

An estimated 2500 scientific publications so far have been based
on this information, furthering our knowledge of the planet.

Now with the end of the mission, the launch of the upcoming GMES
Sentinel satellites has become even more urgent to ensure the
continuity of data to users, improve the management of the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change
and ensure civil security.

During those ten years, Envisat witnessed the gradual shrinking of
Arctic sea ice and the regular opening of the polar shipping routes
during summer months.
Together with other satellites, it monitored the global sea-level
height and regional variations, as well as global sea-surface temperatures with a precision of a few tenths of a degree.

Release published by the European Space Agency (ESA)

27

Study of Patagonian glacier’s rise and fall adds
to understanding of global climate change
Woods Hole, Mass., 16 March 2012 – Glaciers play a vital role in
Earth’s climate system, and it’s critical to understand what contributes to their fluctuation.
Increased global temperatures are frequently viewed as the cause
of glacial melt, but a new study of Patagonia’s Gualas Glacier highlights the role of precipitation in the glacier’s fluctuation. The study,
conducted by Sébastien Bertrand of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and his colleagues, reconstructs a 5,400
year-record of the region’s glacial environment and climate, comparing past temperature and rainfall data with sediment records of
glacier fluctuations and the historical observations of early Spanish
explorers.
The study, ‘Precipitation as the main driver of Neoglacial fluctuations of Gualas Glacier, Northern Patagonian Icefield,’ was published March 15 in the Open Access journal Climate of the Past.

A team of researchers led by Sébastien Bertrand, of the WHOI Marine
Chemistry and Geochemistry department, took sediment samples during five
weeks of field work in the fjords of Chilean Patagonia. (Photo courtesy of Dr.
Claudia Silva.)

As glaciers fluctuate, retreating or adding mass, they dramatically
affect the water cycle – locking up fresh water as they amass, causing the sea level to rise as they thaw and retreat.

during the last century, seems to be driven by a decrease in winter
precipitation – snow – rather than by an increase in temperature.”

“Improving our understanding of the impact of climate changes on
glacier variability is one of the most pressing aspects of present-day
climate research,” says Bertrand, a postdoctoral fellow in WHOI’s
Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry department and the Renard
Centre of Marine Geology, University of Ghent.

The study constituted the first effort to use glaciomarine sediments–
sediments transported by glaciers or their meltwater to the marine
environment – from the fjords of Northern Chilean Patagonia to
reconstruct Holocene glacier fluctuations, reaching back 5,400
years. After analyzing a sediment core gathered in the central basin
of Golfo Elefantes during a 2005 cruise aboard the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer, the scientists reckoned that over five millennia the
glacier had seen three major periods of advance. Once this picture
was assembled, it was compared with data on regional temperature
and precipitation to determine which factor most impacted Gualas
Glacier.

The focus of the work is Gualas Glacier, a 32-kilometre long shifting mountain of ice with an area of 119.2 square kilometres that sits
above Golfo Elefantes. It is part of the Northern Patagonian Icefield
(NPI), a series of 70 glaciers fed by precipitation that originates in
the Pacific Ocean and falls in the rain belt west of the Andes, reaching levels of up to ten metres a year. The majority of the western NPI
glaciers have retreated over the last 150 years.

Two high resolution sea-surface temperature records were used as
temperature indicators, and pollen records demonstrated precipitation levels. Examining these, the scientists discovered trends in
the pollen/precipitation levels that corresponded to the fluctuations
seen in the glacier, while the temperature levels were less influential, suggesting the glacier was mostly affected by precipitation.

“These glaciers are retreating as a response to global climate
change, but not only because of increasing temperature, which is
generally cited as the cause of worldwide glacier retreat,” said Bertrand. “The fast retreat of Gualas, and other western NPI glaciers,

In addition to the geological record, the study incorporates the
observations of early Spanish explorers, beginning with Antonio
de Vea in 1675. Spanish explorers documented their voyages to
Patagonia, noting what they saw, and omitting what they didn’t –
or couldn’t – see. Using the explorers’ maps and descriptions of
Patagonia’s fjords, Bertrand and his colleagues pieced together the
life-story of Gualas Glacier. Through studying these historical documents, the scientists determined that Gualas Glacier has retreated
nine kilometres over the last 110 years, including 2.5km during the
last 25 years.
Although this study reveals the glaciers west of the Andes are controlled by precipitation, Bertrand says that glaciers on the eastern
– leeward – flank of the icefield may be controlled by temperature.

“It needs to be tested if we are to understand and better predict
the impact of global climate change on Patagonian glaciers,” he
said. He added that glaciers located in other maritime environments might also be driven by changes in precipitation rather than
temperature.

Torrejón plumbed the records of the 17th-century Spanish explorers archived at the library at the University of Concepción and the
National Library of Chile, in Santiago. His contribution added an
interesting historical component to the study and confirmed the
interpretation of the geological/sediment record.

The idea to use historical documents came from team member
Fernando Torrejón, an historian with the University of Concepción (Chile) who specializes in extracting climate and environmental information from written and iconographic documents. Bertrand
recalls, “I knew his work on some Chilean glaciers, such as San
Rafael, so I asked him to participate in this study to complement the
results from the sediment cores.”

Taming uncertainty in climate prediction
Using the uncertainty quantification method in precipitation modeling
March 2012 – Uncertainty just became more certain. Atmospheric
and computational researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used a new scientific approach called ‘uncertainty quantification,’ or UQ, that allowed them to better simulate precipitation. Their
study is the first to apply a stochastic sampling method to select
model inputs for precipitation representations and improve atmospheric simulations within a regional weather research and forecasting model. Their approach marks a significant advancement in representing precipitation, one of the most difficult climate components
to simulate.

a way to assess key parameters that are critical for precipitation
calculation in regional and global climate models.”
Using the vast amount of data collected at SGP, the team used a
numerical technique to identify and improve the precipitation calculations in WRF. The team was the first to use a stochastic algorithm, an important sampling method to study parameterizations in
regional climate simulations. The method, called Multiple Very Fast
Simulated Annealing (MVFSA), randomly chooses numbers within
distributions to minimize model errors. MVFSA is computationally
more efficient, requiring a lower number of simulations to better
match the observational data.

The word ‘uncertain’ always seems to appear when describing
Earth and atmospheric systems in numerical models. Trying to represent complexity through computer simulations has limitations,
not the least of which is a lack of sufficient computing power. Consider trying to model human body systems with numbers. Humans
come in all shapes, sizes, ages, locations, and temperaments. It’s
the same with atmospheric systems. Getting a handle on the systems’ uncertainties, to effectively and efficiently represent current
weather and climate systems in a computer model, paves the way
for scientists to apply those same techniques to predict the future
climate changes. Sound predictions will give planners the tools to
forecast the probability of extreme weather and climate events.

MVFSA identified five optimal parameters to reduce the model
precipitation bias at a 25-kilometre climate grid. The team then
improved precipitation simulations on a 12-kilometre grid, as well as
temperature and wind results. Testing the model on another climate
region showed that the MVFSA process produces improved results
across spatial scales, processes, and other climatic regions.
The results of the UQ process show an improved model with better predictability making it more reliable in projecting future climate
change.

A PNNL team of atmospheric scientists and computational modelers used the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model to validate a new approach to improving parameters used to estimate precipitation. Using observational data from the Southern Great Plains
(SGP), gathered by a US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility, they reduced
the uncertainty for several parameters in the convective cloud
scheme in WRF to improve the precipitation calculations.

Working within the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM5), a global
climate model, the team will test the optimized representations in
convective precipitation scenarios. Finding that some representations were more important than others, the UQ approach will focus
on how improving representations of convection in climate model
helps to improve simulations of the global circulation and climate.

“We used an interdisciplinary team and the powerful computing
resources at multiple locations to tackle this challenge,” said Dr. Yun
Qian, a climate scientist at PNNL. “Precipitation is much more challenging to represent in climate simulations than, for example, temperature. And it’s harder to predict. The UQ methodology provides

Research highlight published by the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory

29

‘Warming hole’ delayed climate change
over eastern United States
50-year model suggests regional pollution obscured a global trend
Cambridge, Mass., 26 April 2012 – Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a
‘warming hole’ over the eastern United States – that is, a cold patch
where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.
While greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warm the
Earth’s surface, tiny particles in the air can have the reverse effect
on regional scales.
“What we’ve shown is that particulate pollution over the eastern
United States has delayed the warming that we would expect to
see from increasing greenhouse gases,” says lead author Eric
Leibensperger (Ph.D. ‘11), who completed the work as a graduate
student in applied physics at SEAS.
“For the sake of protecting human health and reducing acid rain,
we’ve now cut the emissions that lead to particulate pollution,” he
adds, “but these cuts have caused the greenhouse warming in this
region to ramp up to match the global trend.”
At this point, most of the ‘catch-up’ warming has already occurred.
The findings, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and
Physics, present a more complete picture of the processes that
affect regional climate change. The work also carries significant
implications for the future climate of industrial nations, like China,
that have not yet implemented air quality regulations to the same
extent as the United States.
Until the United States passed the Clean Air Act in 1970 and
strengthened it in 1990, particulate pollution hung thick over the
central and eastern states. Most of these particles in the atmosphere were made of sulfate, originating as sulfur emissions from
coal-fired power plants. Compared to greenhouse gases, particulate pollution has a very short lifetime (about one week), so its distribution over the Earth is uneven.
“The primary driver of the warming hole is the aerosol pollution –
these small particles,” says Leibensperger. “What they do is reflect
incoming sunlight, so we see a cooling effect at the surface.”
This effect has been known for some time, but the new analysis
demonstrates the strong impact that decreases in particulate pollution can have on regional climate.
The researchers found that interactions between clouds and particles amplified the cooling. Particles of pollution can act as nucleation sites for cloud droplets, which can in turn reflect even more sunlight than the particles would individually, leading to greater cooling
at the surface.

Observed change in surface air temperature between 1930 and 1990.
Observations are from the NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. (Image
courtesy of Eric Leibensperger.)

The researchers’ analysis is based on a combination of two complex models of Earth systems. The pollution data comes from the
GEOS-Chem model, which was first developed at Harvard and,
through a series of many updates, has since become an international standard for modeling pollution over time. The climate data
comes from the general circulation model developed by NASA’s
Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Both models are rooted in decades’ worth of observational data.
Since the early 20th century, global mean temperatures have risen
– by approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius from 1906 to 2005 – but in
the US ‘warming hole,’ temperatures decreased by as much as one
degree Celsius during the period 1930–1990. US particulate pollution peaked in 1980 and has since been reduced by about half. By
2010 the average cooling effect over the East had fallen to just 0.3
degrees Celsius.
“Such a large fraction of the sulfate has already been removed that
we don’t have much more warming coming along due to further controls on sulfur emissions in the future,” says principal investigator
Daniel Jacob, the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric
Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at SEAS.
Jacob is also a Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard and a faculty associate of the Harvard University Center for
the Environment.
Besides confirming that particulate pollution plays a large role in
affecting US regional climate, the research emphasizes the importance of accounting for the climate impacts of particulates in future
air quality policies.
“Something similar could happen in China, which is just beginning to tighten up its pollution standards,” says co-author Loretta

30

Reference

J. Mickley, a Senior Research Fellow in atmospheric chemistry at
SEAS. “China could see significant climate change due to declining
levels of particulate pollutants.”

Sulfates are harmful to human health and can also cause acid rain,
which damages ecosystems and erodes buildings.

Release published by the Harvard’s School
of Engineering and Applied Sciences

“No one is suggesting that we should stop improving air quality,
but it’s important to understand the consequences. Clearing the air
could lead to regional warming,” Mickley says.

Cassini sees objects blazing trails in Saturn ring
Pasadena, Calif., 23 April 2012 – Scientists working with images
from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have discovered strange half-milesized (kilometre-sized) objects punching through parts of Saturn’s
F ring, leaving glittering trails behind them. These trails in the rings,
which scientists are calling ‘mini-jets,’ fill in a missing link in our
story of the curious behavior of the F ring. The results will be presented tomorrow at the European Geosciences Union meeting in
Vienna, Austria.
“I think the F ring is Saturn’s weirdest ring, and these latest Cassini
results go to show how the F ring is even more dynamic than we
ever thought,” said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member
based at Queen Mary University of London, England. “These findings show us that the F ring region is like a bustling zoo of objects
from a half mile [kilometre] to moons like Prometheus a hundred
miles [kilometres] in size, creating a spectacular show.”

This set of six images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows trails
that were dragged out from Saturn’s F ring by objects about a half mile (1
kilometre) in diameter. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/QMUL.

Scientists have known that relatively large objects like Prometheus
(as long as 92 miles, or 148 kilometres, across) can create channels, ripples and snowballs in the F ring. But scientists didn’t know
what happened to these snowballs after they were created, Murray said. Some were surely broken up by collisions or tidal forces
in their orbit around Saturn, but now scientists have evidence that
some of the smaller ones survive, and their differing orbits mean
they go on to strike through the F ring on their own.

delighted to find 500 examples of these rogues during just the seven
years Cassini has been at Saturn.”
In some cases, the objects traveled in packs, creating mini-jets that
looked quite exotic, like the barb of a harpoon. Other new images
show grand views of the entire F ring, showing the swirls and eddies
that ripple around the ring from all the different kinds of objects moving through and around it.

These small objects appear to collide with the F ring at gentle
speeds – something on the order of about four miles per hour (two
metres per second). The collisions drag glittering ice particles out
of the F ring with them, leaving a trail typically 20 to 110 miles (40
to 180 kilometres) long. Murray’s group happened to see a tiny trail
in an image from Jan. 30, 2009 and tracked it over eight hours. The
long footage confirmed the small object originated in the F ring, so
they went back through the Cassini image catalog to see if the phenomenon was frequent.

“Beyond just showing us the strange beauty of the F ring, Cassini’s studies of this ring help us understand the activity that occurs
when solar systems evolve out of dusty disks that are similar to, but
obviously much grander than, the disk we see around Saturn,” said
Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We can’t wait to see what else
Cassini will show us in Saturn’s rings.”
Release published by NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission team

“The F ring has a circumference of 550,000 miles [881,000 kilometres], and these mini-jets are so tiny they took quite a bit of time
and serendipity to find,” said Nick Attree, a Cassini imaging associate at Queen Mary. “We combed through 20,000 images and were

31

Report on the 2012 editon of GIFT
The 10th edition of the GIFT (Geosciences Information For Teachers) Workshop took place on 23–25 April at the EGU General
Assembly, starting with the traditional visit and ice-breaker party in
Vienna’s Museum of Natural Sciences on Sunday April 22.

effort that now includes distinguished lecturers, teachers at sea,
video-conferences and Powerpoint presentations of GIFT lectures
that can be downloaded for classroom use. This effort has resulted,
particularly this year, in many exchanges and networking between
the participating teachers post-GIFT, which bodes well for panEuropean and international links in the future.
Also, in the 10 years of existence, the GIFT Workshops have built
a library of digital material that teachers all over the world can use
with their pupils in the classroom:
• Presentations of all invited speakers are available for download, free
from copyrights, as PDF files.
• Selected lectures have been video-recorded and mounted online for
use in the classroom. The GIFT library will have 24 online presentations including seven new ones recorded in 2012, available starting
September 2012. In addition, interviews, extra videos, and photographic collections are available to teachers to illustrate the initiative
to their colleagues and students.
• Occasionally, additional material provided by speakers is placed
online, including the presentations given at the Alexander von Humboldt GIFT workshops.

The 2012 GIFT group at the EGU General Assembly.

The general theme of this year’s workshop, which united 80 teachers from 19 different countries, was ‘Water!’. Leading scientists in
the field (Alberto Montanari, Gilles Bœuf, Murugesu Sivapalan,
Günter Blöeschl, Hubert Savenije, Pierre-Philippe Mathieu, Mario
Rebolledo, and Nick van de Giesen) gave presentations on the current major problems of the water cycle, including water availability
and distribution, biological significance of water, floods, water pollution, research for underground water, and atmospheric processes
contributing to the water cycle and water management.

Feedback from participating teachers
“[François Tilquin’s presentation] is how teaching should be done,
nowadays it has become so prescriptive and textbook, how great to
see such an enthusiastic practitioner” – Sarah Calne, UK

Some teachers also gave presentations (teacher-to-teacher communications) on their school projects aimed to improve the understanding of the water cycle. Hands-on activities were also present
in this year’s workshop. They were of particular interest, turning the
GIFT lecture room into a laboratory for an afternoon as François
Tilquin, a French teacher, presented a project on piezometric mapping and underground water modeling.

“I have just come back home and I want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me to take part in this activity. It was amazing; I am
still fascinated and impressed!” – Ramona Retegan, Romania
“At a time when funding and support for teachers is being cut in
school systems across the world, I am so pleased to see the level
of dedication of the Committee on Education of the European Geosciences Union. Your committee put together an extremely amazing conference and a learning experience that I will be able to share
with my students for years to come.” – Kisha Davies-Caldwell, USA

In the past three years, the GIFT Workshop has also included a
poster session, Science in Tomorrow’s Classroom. This year, teachers presented 34 posters, demonstrating the activities they use to
engage their students in a variety of science subjects and community outreach. This forum resulted in a great deal of discussions
among teachers for sharing teaching strategies and making connections for future cooperation between their schools. For many
teachers, it was the first opportunity to produce a poster, and several teachers realized that posters can be used in their schools to
highlight to other students, teachers, and the community, the exceptional work they and their students carry out.

“[The main benefits are] contact with foreign teachers in the aim
of future exchanges (experiments and also true exchange with students), because it’s an incredible opportunity to meet colleagues, to
know them, and to be able to stay in touch for working together after
the GIFT.” – Karine Tardy, France
“It was pleasure to be part of something so great” – Petra Skoupilova, Czech Republic

The 2012 GIFT Workshop marks the 10th anniversary of this activity, which has been the driving force for advancing the importance
of education at EGU. The initial GIFT Workshop model at the General Assembly has grown into a multi-faceted educational outreach

EGU Committee on Education

32

Continuum Mechanics in the Earth Sciences
By William I. Newman

Publisher’s summary
Continuum mechanics underlies many geological and geophysical phenomena, from earthquakes and faults to the fluid dynamics of the Earth. This interdisciplinary book provides geoscientists,
physicists and applied mathematicians with a class-tested, accessible overview of continuum mechanics. Starting from thermodynamic principles and geometrical insights, the book surveys solid,
fluid and gas dynamics. In later review chapters, it explores new
aspects of the field emerging from nonlinearity and dynamical complexity and provides a brief introduction to computational modeling.
Simple, yet rigorous, derivations are used to review the essential
mathematics. The author emphasizes the full three-dimensional
geometries of real-world examples, enabling students to apply this
in deconstructing solid earth and planet-related problems. Problem sets and worked examples are provided, making this a practical resource for graduate students in geophysics, planetary physics
and geology and a beneficial tool for professional scientists seeking
a better understanding of the mathematics and physics within Earth
sciences.

Orogenesis: The Making of Mountains
By Michael R. W. Johnson
and Simon L. Harley

Publisher’s summary
Orogenesis, the process of mountain building, occurs when two tectonic plates collide – either forcing material upwards to form mountain belts such as the Alps or Himalayas or causing one plate to be
subducted below the other, resulting in volcanic mountain chains
such as the Andes. Integrating the approaches of structural geology and metamorphism, this book provides an up-to-date overview
of orogenic research and an introduction to the physico-chemical
properties of mountain belts. Global examples are explored, the
interactioning roles of temperature and deformation in the orogenic
process are reviewed, and important new concepts such as channel flow are explained. This book provides a valuable introduction
to this fast-moving field for advanced undergraduate and graduate
students of structural geology, plate tectonics and geodynamics,
and will also provide a vital overview of research for academics and
researchers working in related fields including petrology geochemistry and sedimentology.

Tsunamis in the World Ocean: Past,
Present and Future, Volume II
Edited by K. Satake, U.
Kânoğlu, and S. Tinti

Publisher’s summary
The tsunami from the 1960 Chilean earthquake affected the entire
Pacific Ocean and motivated the international coordination of tsunami research and warning systems around the Pacific. However,
the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami affected the entire world, and
reminded that tsunamis are not a local or regional problem but a
global issue.

This volume contains 15 papers, mostly presented at the 24th International Tsunami Symposium held on 14–16 July 2009 in Novosibirsk, Russia. They reflect the current state of tsunami science,
including studies of recent tsunamis, tsunami statistics and warning,
and modeling tsunami runup and inundation.

Price: € 53.45

Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate
By David Randall

Publisher’s summary
The atmosphere is critical to climate change. It can amplify shifts
in the climate system, and also mitigate them. This primer offers a
short, reader-friendly introduction to these atmospheric processes
and how they work, written by a leading expert on the subject.

Giving readers an overview of key atmospheric processes, David
Randall looks at how our climate system receives energy from the
sun and sheds it by emitting infrared radiation back into space. The
atmosphere regulates these radiative energy flows and transports
energy through weather systems such as thunderstorms, monsoons, hurricanes, and winter storms. Randall explains how these
processes work, and also how precipitation, cloud formation, and
other phase changes of water strongly influence weather and climate. He discusses how atmospheric feedbacks affect climate
change, how the large-scale atmospheric circulation works, how
predicting the weather and the climate are fundamentally different
challenges, and much more. This is the ideal introduction for students and nonspecialists. No prior experience in atmospheric science is needed, only basic college physics.

Price: £23.99 (~€30.00)

Authoritative and concise, Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and
easy-to-follow explanations of a few key equations. This accessible
primer is the essential introduction to atmospheric processes and
the vital role they play in our climate system.

34

The Ecology of Snow and Ice Environments
A review of a new book by three UK geoscientists
By Johanna Laybourn-Parry,
Martyn Tranter, and Andrew
J. Hodson

snow and ice, which on Earth are found in the form of superficial
snow cover, glaciers, sea/lake ice, ice caps, and ice fields. The following four chapters cover these environments more specifically,
citing research done from the mountain glaciers of middle latitudes
to the ice caps of the poles. These environments are subdivided into
more specific habitats, like cryoconites – pools of liquid water forming on the surface of melting glaciers, or brine channels – a network
of water with high salt concentration forming during freezing of seawater, or subglacial lakes. The latter are especially interesting after
the announcement this year that a Russian drilling project reached
Lake Vostok, a lake buried under the Antarctic ice cap and possibly
an ecosystem that remained isolated for millions of years.

Chapter six is dedicated to astrobiology and discusses whether
these extreme, but earth-bound ecosystems can be used as models of inference towards possible extraterrestrial habitats and life
forms on other worlds, like the icy moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
Finally, the last chapter proposes possible future research directions, especially the use of remote-sensing technology or molecular
analysis to understand the geographic distribution and evolution of
the ‘ice-loving’ organisms.

On a first and superficial glimpse a landscape covered by ice and
snow appears barren and devoid of life. But if you study more carefully the pockets of liquid water forming on, in, or below this cover,
a fascinating microcosm emerges. An extreme environment, characterized by low temperatures, low nutrient content, reduced or
increased solar irradiance (depending of thickness and the albedo
of snow), sudden changes in salinity, pH, or water chemistry – a
world inhabited mostly by microorganisms with peculiar adaptations
to survive and thrive. Until now, a guide to this world was lacking
and research on the subject was scattered in many scientific publications, hard to access by those not directly involved in the topic.

The book is mainly addressed to glaciologists, microbiologists or
ecologists, but the introductory chapter and a short glossary provide basic definitions of terms used, enabling also non-glaciologist/
biologists to follow the explanations and argumentations of later
chapters.

The Ecology of Snow and Ice Environments by polar researchers
and geographers J. Laybourn-Parry, M. Tranter, and A. J. Hodson,
tries to bridge this gap by providing a short (142 pages of text with
black & white images, plus an inlet with colour plates) but well documented textbook, discussing the many aspects of ice and snow as
a base of an ecosystem.

There is only one minor point for criticism with this book: as the
authors admit already in the preface, they don’t discuss the ecology
of frozen soils or permafrost. Considering the possible effects of
increased microbial activity and release of greenhouse gases from
warming soils, this would make for a timely and valuable additional
chapter in future editions.

The book is divided into seven main chapters, dealing with specific cold habitats or discussing recent and future research. The first
chapter introduces the basic physical and chemical properties of

David Bressan, freelance geologist based in Italy

The Open Access Journals of the European Geosciences Union

35

Featured website: Climate Communication
Making climate science heard and understood
Funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the ClimateWorks
Foundation, Climate Communication is a non-profit science and
outreach project aiming to make climate science heard and understood. The staff of three publicizes the latest climate research in
plain language, helps scientists improve their communication, and
assists journalists in gathering reliable scientific information and
contacting experts.
The project is directed by Susan Joy Hassol, an experienced climate change communicator, and by Richard Somerville, a climate
scientist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Over 20 leading climate scientists, who act
as advisors, back the initiative.

Social media: Whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s following the EGU?
To demonstrate the global reach of our social media network,
we feature some of our most prominent followers
In this issue of GeoQ, we highlight five followers of the official
accounts of EGU on Twitter, @EuroGeosciences.
@YaleE360: Yale Environment 360 is a Publication of the Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies featuring opinions,
analysis and the latest environmental news. The feed also includes
external environmental news from trusted sources.
@Cindy_sismologa: Cindy Mora-Stock is a Chilean seismologist
currently based in Kiel, Germany. She regularly tweets (mostly in
Spanish) interesting stories on earthquakes, volcanos, Chilean geoscience, among others.
@GeographicalMag: Geographical is the magazine of the Londonbased Royal Geographical Society. Aside from geography, it covers
topics such as culture, environment, science, and exploration.
@BritGeoSurvey: the BGS Twitter feed regularly brings their followers interesting news and updates from the British Geological
Survey.
@Polar_Research: the Twitter feed of the Association of Polar Early
Career Scientists, an international and interdisciplinary organization for young scientists and educators, is your one-stop source of
APECS and polar research news.

wonders through an exciting range of pre and post Congress field
trips. It will demonstrate the crucial role that geoscience plays in the
quest for sustainable development and show how geoscience contributes directly to the future of its resource-based industries, land
and water management and mitigation of geohazards.

02–06 July 2012, Irkutsk, Russia
This Symposium is a traditional meeting of the atmospheric and
ocean optics and the atmospheric physics community. The conference coincides with the forty-year anniversary of the Institute of
Atmospheric Optics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy
of Sciences.

Website: http://www.34igc.org/
Contact: info@34igc.org

8th International Conference on Urban Climate and
10th Symposium on the Urban Environment

Website: http://symp.iao.ru/en/aoo/18/i1/
Contact: symp2012@iao.ru

06–10 August 2012, Dublin, Ireland

4th International Summer School on Radar/SAR

The International Association for Urban Climate & the American
Meteorological Society (AMS) Board of the Urban Environment
warmly invite you to the joint 8th International Conference on Urban
Climate (ICUC8) & AMS 10th Symposium on the Urban Environment.
These meetings are preeminent events presenting research on the
urban climate effect at all scales and have set important benchmarks for the development of the field. The aims of this conference
are to provide an international forum where the world’s urban climatologists can discuss modern developments in research, and the
application of climatic knowledge to the design of better cities.

13–20 July 2012, Bonn, Germany
At the 4th International Summer School on Radar / SAR, the organizers offer the unique opportunity to gain an in-depth education
on radar and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques by distinguished international lecturers. The programme covers a wide
range from radar fundamentals over state-of-the-art Radar/SAR
systems to sophisticated array signal processing techniques.
Website: http://www.radarsummerschool.fraunhofer.de/
summerschool/
Contact: humboldtstein@awobu.awo.org

Website: http://www.icuc8.org/
Contact: info@icuc8.org

AOGS–AGU (WPGM) Joint Assembly

39th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space
Research and Associated Events COSPAR 2012

14–22 July 2012, Mysore, India
The COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) Scientific Assembly is a premier forum for presenting the most important results in
space research in all disciplines and it is considered as a focal point
for truly international space science. The Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO) is organizing COSPAR 2012 in Mysore, India
under the theme ‘Space – for the benefit of Mankind’.

Under the theme ‘Unearthing our Past and Future’, the IGC will
showcase Oceania’s geoscience strengths, innovations and natural

The Assembly program will include plenary and breakout meetings, symposia, a poster session and an exhibition of geophysical

37

equipment, books and journals in the Earth sciences. The participants are welcome to join various sightseeing activities in Moscow
as well as trips to the northern capital of Russia, Saint-Petersburg,
and the range of ancient cities known as the Golden Ring of Russia whose museums contain vast collections of historic treasures.

When, where, how have floods changed in Europe? Why do floods
change? How sensitive are floods to changes in land use and climate? How confident can we be about predicting future changes
in floods? The symposium ‘Deciphering River Flood Change’
addresses these research questions in an European context. Specifically the following topics will be addressed: recent evidence
on flood changes, historic floods, atmospheric and land use controls on flood changes, flood change modelling, harmonising flood
related data in Europe.

03–05 September 2012, Vienna, Austria

22–28 August 2012, Nevessee (Lago di Neves), Italy
The school is aimed at teaching advanced techniques of quantitative structural analysis in deformed basement rocks. The school is
divided into two parts: (a) Two days of field work on glacier-polished
outcrops in the Nevessee (Lago di Neves) area. (b) The field workshop will be followed by four days of in-classroom teaching in Varna
(Brixen) on the theory of deformation and of quantitative methods of
micro- and meso-structural analysis of deformed rocks.

Following UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction recommendations and starting from shared existing knowledge and practices, this conference aims at presenting innovative tools and integrated cost effective methodologies to mitigate risks from various
hazards on active volcanoes (prevention, crisis management and
recovering). The focus is particularly put on integrating tools. This
concerns interdisciplinary integration between different domains
(e.g. inputs of social approaches in risk mapping methodologies)
but also integration between the three different phases of risk management (e.g. Information System designed to be used both for risk
mapping and crisis management). The aim of the conference is to
enhance exchanges between specialists of different domains.

27–29 August 2012, Dresden, Germany
This event will be held at the conference center of the Deutsches
Hygiene-Museum in Dresden 27–29 August 2012. At the welcoming
party on August 26 participants will have the opportunity to see one
of the oldest mineralogical-geological collections – the Museum of
Mineralogy and Geology in Dresden, Saxony. On August 28, during
the conference, participants will visit Freiberg and its mineralogical
collections at the TU Bergakademie in addition to the new mineral
exhibit Terra Mineralia at the Freudenstein castle.

The goals of this workshop are to review the current state of knowledge about trends in these atmospheric regions, and to discuss
what research is necessary for resolving inconsistencies, reducing
uncertainties, and achieving a deeper understanding of middle and
upper atmospheric climate change – especially the relative influences of anthropogenic and solar effects.

The theme of the joint EAGE (European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers)/GRSG (Geological Remote Sensing Group)
workshop is ‘Mapping the morphology, chemistry and mineralogy
of the ground surface’. The meeting will coincide with the Near Surface Geoscience meeting 2012, annually organized by EAGE. Both
events will be held at the beautiful Palais des Congrès d’Issy in the
south-west of Paris.

The joint GRACE Science Team Meeting (GSTM) and Final Colloquium of the DFG Special Priority Program (SPP1257) ‘Mass Transport and Mass Distribution in the System Earth’ will take place at
the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam.
The meeting will be followed by a one day Sea Level Workshop
(September 20) organized by the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) and the SPP1257.

Amman, Jordan has been chosen to host the first EAGE Workshop
on Dead Sea Sinkholes. The workshop will be held at the Holiday
Inn Amman. The meeting is expected to answer various questions
regarding sinkholes in the Dead Sea region, including their geographical distribution and formation.
Website: http://www.eage.org/events/index.
php?eventid=733&Opendivs=s3
Contact: hba@eage.org

Predictions for Hydrology, Ecology, and Water
Resources Management Conference

16th WEGENER General Assembly

24–27 September 2012, Vienna, Austria

23–26 September 2012, Strasbourg, France

The conference will bring together professionals, scientists and
members of governmental institutions dealing with water resources
management. Representatives of natural, social and engineering sciences will meet together to exchange experience and present the current views on the adaptation and mitigation of adverse
effects of global change on water resources systems.

The Institut de Physique du Globe and Ecole et Observatoire des
Sciences de la Terre of the University of Strasbourg welcome the
XVI General Assembly of WEGENER. The scientific programme is
prepared around six sessions that emphasize multidisciplinary studies of Earth deformation using geodetic techniques, active tectonics, geophysical observations and various modeling approaches.